APPENDIX - INSIGHTS FROM POETRY

From the dawn of time, people have written verse about the concerns of their heart. When people feel hope and worry, love and fear, they often try to express and communicate their thoughts and feelings in the form of poetry.

In Chapters Two and Three, we traced the development of Western philosophy up until the present, showing how the three main philosophical archetypes - science, religion, and barbarism - interacted and developed throughout history.  We used the quotations of philosophers to help us see the changes in Man's outlook

To give us further insight and understanding into the changes we described, we will now look at some examples of verse that can reveal more about how the heart and mind of Man has changed over time.   Poets can capture the spirit of their time in a few words, and many of them wrote about the spirit of science, religion, and barbarism.  We will now examine some representative poems to try to gain a deeper understanding into how the spirit of Man developed through history.

THE PSALMS OF DAVID

The psalms written by King David in Jerusalem about 2700 years ago are prime examples of the religious personality, and give us insights into the nature of that personality.  Some themes that shine out in his psalms are David's love of God, his desire to be good and avoid the path of the wicked (who we call the barbarian), how small Man is in relation to God, and his plea for forgiveness. 

Psalm 23
A song of David:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not lack.
In lush meadows He lays me down, beside tranquil waters He leads me.
He restores my soul.  He leads me on paths of justice for His Name's sake.
Though I walk in the valley overshadowed by death,
I will fear no evil, for You are with me.
You prepare a table before me in full view of my tormentors.
You anointed my head with oil, my cup overflows.
May only goodness and kindness pursue me all the days of my life,
And I shall dwell in the House of the Lord for long years.

The Psalms are love songs to God, to Whom David expresses his loyalty, gratitude, and passionate devotion:

I will love You, O Lord, my strength. (18:2)
To fulfill Your will, my G-d, have I desired.  (40:9)
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh longs for You. (63:2)
My soul cleaves after You. (63:3)
May my words be sweet to Him - I will rejoice in the Lord. (104:34)
My heart is steadfast, O God, I will sing and I will make music even with my soul. (108:2)

David tries to be a good person, and offers his definition of who a good person is:

Psalm 15
A song of David.
O Lord; Who may sojourn in Your Tent?
Who may dwell in Your Holy Mountain?
He who walks in perfect innocence, does what is right,

and speaks the truth from his heart;

Who has no slander on his tongue, who has done his friend no evil,

nor cast disgrace upon his intimate;

In whose eyes the despicable is repulsive, but those who fear the Lord he honors;

One who does not retract, though he has sworn to his hurt;

Who lends not his money at interest, nor takes a bribe against the innocent.

Whoever does these shall forever not falter.

David describes the good person as someone who fears and honors God, and is honest, upright, and generous.  In stark contrast, David depicts the 'wicked' (the barbarian) as being selfish, indulgent, and oppressive - traits that are related to the wicked person's not believing in God:

Psalm 73:6
Their necklace is pride, enwrapping their body in their own violence.
Bulging from corpulence are their eyes,
They went beyond the fantasies of the heart
They consume and speak of foul oppression.
Out of haughtiness they speak. 
They direct their mouth against Heaven, and their tongue struts on earth.

Psalm 10:2
In the wicked one's haughtiness, he hunts down the poor
Who are caught in the devices which they have contrived.
For the wicked man glories in his personal desires,
and the brazen robber blesses himself for blaspheming the Lord.
The wicked man, in the pride of his countenance, says: 'He will not avenge!'
All his thoughts are: 'There is no G-d.'
...He fills his mouth with oaths, with deception and malice,
And under his tongue are mischief and iniquity.
He waits in ambush near open cities, in hidden places he murders the innocent,
His eyes spy on the helpless.
He lurks in hiding like a lion, he lurks in concealment to seize the poor.

This gives us insight into the nature of the barbarian, who emphasizes that there is no God, focuses on indulging his own desires,  and takes advantage of others.

At least in part, the awe that David feels towards God springs from how limited Man is in relation to God:

The heavens declare the glory of G-d,
and the expanse of the sky tells of His handiwork. (19:2)

What is man that You recognize him?
The son of frail human that you reckon with him?
Man is like a breath, his days are like a passing shadow. (144:3)

What is the frail human that You should remember him?
And what is the son of mortal man that You should be mindful of him?
Yet You have made him only a little less than the angels,
And crowned him with a soul and a splendor. (8:5)

Filled with love and awe, David cries out for God to overlook his shortcomings and shower him with goodness:

 Instruct me, O Lord, in Your way, that I may walk in Your truth,
dedicate my heart to fear Your Name. (86:11) 

Show me favor, according to Your kindness,
according to Your vast compassion erase my transgressions.
Abundantly cleanse me from my iniquity, and from my sin purify me.
For my transgressions I recognize, and my sin is before me always. (51:3)

 Hide Your face from my sins, and all my iniquities erase.
A pure heart create for me, O G-d, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.
Cast me not away from Your Presence, and Your Holy Spirit take not from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and with a generous spirit sustain me. (51:9)

 Place my tears in Your flask.  Are they not Your record? (56:9)

King David's psalms embody the spirit and feelings of the religious personality, and throughout the millennia they have formed a central part of much religious worship.  They give us great insight into the religious mind.

 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

We will now fly over eons of time to the English Renaissance and to another towering soul, William Shakespeare.  Between King David and Shakespear the Greeks shone their light on the world, Rome rose and fell, and the Church put its stamp on the thought of Europe.  We can see in Shakespeare's writings the Renaissance's rediscovery of the Greek ideals of the nobility of Man, reason, and art. 

The Greeks agreed with Religion that one of the challenges of the human condition is to ensure that desire does not jump over its boundaries and become destructive. (The Barbarian is not concerned with this problem).  While Religion assigns this task of internal policeman to the fear and love of God, the Greeks assigned this job to Man's Reason.  We will see that when Shakespeare speaks of love for women, he understands that love is given its parameters by Reason.

The Renaissance emphasized the Greek tenet that Man is to be put on a pedestal. Devotion was directed more towards other people, and less on God.   Just as King David devoted most of his Psalms to expressing his love towards God, Shakespeare devotes most of his 154 Sonnets to expressing his love towards other people, specifically romantic love towards women:

from Sonnet 76:
Oh know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument.

from Sonnet 17:
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say: 'This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

Then happy I that love and am belov'd. (sonnet 25)
Take all my loves, my love, yea, take them all. (40)
Gentle thou art, and therefore to be won; Beauteous thou art, therefore to be assail'd.(41)
Being your slave, what should I do but tend Upon the hours and times of your desire? ( 57)
So are you to my thoughts as food to life. (75)
Such is my love, to thee I so belong. (88)
Thy love is better than high birth to me (91)
Let not my love be call'd idolatry (105)
For nothing in this wide universe I call, Save thou my rose: in it thou art my all. (109)

Instead of the God-centered orientation of the Psalms and the Middle Ages, Shakespeare talks very little about God, and instead reflects the Man-centered orientation of the Renaissance and the Greek philosophy that inspired it:

from Sonnet 53:
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new.

However no matter how great Shakespeare's love is, he recognizes clearly that he is mortal, and that the major enemies of love and life are time and death:

And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defense. (sonnet 12)
All in war with Time for love of you. (15)
Make war upon this bloody tyrant Time (16)
Devouring Time (19)
Time's injurious hand (63)
Time's thievish progress to eternity (77)
Time's tyranny. (115)
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? (146)

Acknowledging that the ravages of Time destroys beauty and love, Shakespeare says that he can use his mind, creativity, and art to come to the rescue by immortalizing his love in his beautiful words.  Indeed, there is some truth to it, as we are reading  his verses today:

 from Sonnet 55
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.

Yet do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong My love shall in my verse ever live young.(19)
That in black ink my love may still shine bright. (68)
Your monument shall be my gentle verse. (81)

Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou are more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often in his hold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance, or nature's changing source, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou we'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
   So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
   So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Though Shakespeare so often writes of love's glorious power and of his poetry's ability to eternalize it, he admits that love can have its dark moments.  For example, the woman he loves can chose another man:

from Sonnet 42
That thou hast her, it is not all my grief;
And it may be said I lov'd her dearly:
That she hath thee is of my wailing chief,
A loss in love that touches me more nearly.

Shakespeare writes of the pain he feels when his loved one doesn't treat him well:

from Sonnet 132
Thine eyes I love, and they, as pitying me, -
Knowing thy heart torment me with disdain -

In his later sonnets, Shakespeare focuses on the problem that can occur when love clouds his Reason and causes him to act blindly in ways he would rather not:

 from Sonnet 137
Thou blind fool, Love, what dost thou to mine eyes,
That they behold, and see not what they see?
They know what beauty is, see where it lies,
Yet what the best is take the worst to be.

from Sonnet 141
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee.

from Sonnet 147
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept.
...For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Shakespeare admits that in the extreme, love's power to throw off Reason can lead to what he refers to as 'lust', and what we have called 'Barbarism'. In this sonnet, he claims that no person is immune to the potential destruction caused when unchecked passion bursts the bonds of Reason:

Sonnet 129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjur'd, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad, -
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof; and prov'd, a very woe;
Before, a joy propos'd; behind, a dream.
  All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
  To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

In these powerful and prophetic words, Shakespeare tells us that desire that overflows the boundaries of Reason becomes 'lust' that is 'murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust'.  Shakespeare describes that one of the ironies of lust is that its promise of joy is illusory, 'enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight'.  In its 'hunt' for gratification, lust goes 'past reason', but 'no sooner' does it achieve its goal than it hates what it did, also 'past reason'.  It's a 'bliss in proof', i.e. expectation (as in an artist's preliminary 'proof'), but 'prov'd', i.e. in actuality, a 'very woe'. 

In the last two lines Shakespeare says that although 'the world well knows' the destructive nature of lust (Barbarism), 'none' are strong enough to 'shun' the beautiful picture painted by desire as 'heaven', but that in reality 'leads men to this hell.'  When the light of Reason and the fear of God are overthrown by 'lust', we careen towards 'hell'. 

In this next sonnet, Shakespeare describes a person who can control his passion and 'inherit heaven's graces'.  But if such a person falls, he falls much farther than others:

Sonnet 94
They that have power to hurt, and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, -
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces,
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others, but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
  For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
  Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

This sonnet describes a person who has the 'power to hurt' and the visible authority that 'show's, and yet exercises an ethical restraint to act righteously and be 'unmoved' and 'cold' to the 'temptation' that accompanies power.  Such people can 'inherit heaven's graces', and this benevolence shows on their 'faces', and 'others' become 'stewards (servants) of their excellence'.  But if a good person, who is like a 'sweet' 'summer's flower', succumbs to temptation, he falls faster and lower than 'weeds' who had no such goodness, for 'sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds'.  Shakespeare warns all people, and especially good people, to be wary of the temptations of what he calls 'lust' (what we refer to as Barbarism).   

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

As the Renaissance spread through Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, it was as if men felt their minds awaken to the powerful potential of Man's Mind.  Inspired by the Greek advice to assume nothing and examine everything, people put everything under the microscope of analysis.  When they examined nature, the result was an explosion of scientific discovery and invention.  Examining political and social institutions resulted in the overthrow of monarchy and the American and French Revolutions.  They also put religion in the crucible of analysis and sought scientific evidence for God and a spiritual world 

In the following poem, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) expresses the belief that examination  has the potential to unlock all the secrets of the universe:

Flower in the Crannied Wall
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

In 'Sonnet on Chillon', Lord Byron (1788-1824) writes about the Chillon prison where many political prisoners were locked up or killed in their struggle against tyranny.  We can see how the popular belief in Mind, Liberty, and Freedom (words all capitalized in the poem) has taken on a religious zeal.  Because of those martyred in this 'holy' struggle, the 'prison is a holy place' and the 'sad floor an altar':

Sonnet on Chillon
Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
  Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art:
  For there thy habitation is the heart -
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned -
  To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom,
  Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
  And thy sad floor an altar - for 't was trod,
Until his very steps have left a trace
  Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod,
By Bonnivard! - May none those marks efface!
  For they appeal from tyranny to God.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) published 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' in 1850.  Sonnet 43 expresses her love for her husband and fellow poet, Robert Browning.  In the poem we can see her pledge to the ideal of love, her belief in God and the soul ('if God choose', 'My soul can reach'), her commitment to the battle for justice ('I love thee freely, as men strive for Right'), and a hint of a slight disillusion in religion ('I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints'):

Sonnets From The Portuguese, Sonnet 43
How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being an ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Note that all three poems so far have mentioned God.  For the first two-thirds of the 19th century, the 'old time religion' and belief in God still held sway, as reflected in this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) who was a Priest as well as a poet: 

Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things -
  For skies of couple-color as a brindled cow;
     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow, and plow;
     And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
         Praise Him.

The last third of the 19th century saw a revolution in thought epitomized by Darwin and Nietzsche. Religion and belief in God came under greater attack and ridicule, and it was believed that Man could become the new 'god'.  This heady feeling of mastery can be seen in this poem by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903) written in 1888: 

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
   Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
   For my unconquerable soul.

 In the fell clutch of circumstance
   I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
   My head is bloody, but unbowed.

 Beyond this place of wrath and tears
   Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
   Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

 It matters not how strait the gait,
  How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
  I am the captain of my soul.

 THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 20th century dawned with the enormous hope that Man, after clawing his way Darwinian style to the top of the evolutionary heap, could now use his mind to create a perfect world, without reliance on what many considered the old 'superstitions' of Religion.  The past century had overcome tyranny, unlocked many of nature's secrets, and created a cornucopia of technology.  Since Science had not shown any evidence of God and the spiritual world, and Darwinism mocked the 'fairy tales' of the Bible, many felt they would have to do without the 'crutch' of Religion.  The phrase 'There is no God' is said four times in the poem by John Masefield, written in 1916:

There is No God, As I Was Taught
There is no God, as I was taught in youth,
Though each, according to his stature, builds
Some covered shrine for what he thinks the truth,
Which day by day his reddest heart-blood gilds.

There is no God; but death, the clasping sea,
In which we move like fish, deep over deep
Made of men's souls that bodies have set free,
Floods to a Justice though it seems asleep.

There is no God, but still, behind the veil,
The hurt thing works, out of its agony.
Still, like a touching of a brimming Grail,
Return the pennies given to passers by.

There is no God, but we, who breathe the air,
Are God ourselves and touch God everywhere.

But alas, the hopes of Utopia were dashed all too soon by World War I.  Many were surprised that Man, discarding Religion and intoxicated with his feeling of strength, instead of ushering in a world filled with Reason opened the floodgates of Barbarism.  The senseless slaughter in Europe certainly didn't feel like Utopia, as expressed by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) at the start of World War I:

The Leaden-Eyed
Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
It's poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

This 'gloom' and 'brave despair' is captured by Siegried Sassoon, written towards the end of World War I:

 Picture Show
And still they come and go: and this is all I know -
That from the gloom I watch an endless picture-show,
Where wild or listless faces flicker on their way,
With glad or grievous hearts I'll never understand
Because Time spins so fast, and they've no time to stay

Beyond the moment's gesture of a lifted hand.
And still, between the shadow and the blinding flame,
The brave despair of men flings onward, ever the same
As in those doom-lit years that wait them, and have been...
And life is just the picture dancing on a screen.

With their belief in God diminished and now disillusioned with Man, people lowered their goals, and tried to accept the idea that life's task was merely carving out a small circle of happiness in one's loneliness, as expressed by William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) in 1917:

Dance Rusee
If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees, -
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades, -

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

Thoughts of Utopia were replaced by concern about world destruction.  Robert Frost (1874-1963) wrote in 1923 that from his vantage point, the 'fire' of desire was more likely to destroy the world than the 'ice' of hate, though both were destructive enough to annihilate the world:

Fire And Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Some looked longingly back at times when Religion and belief in God had given man boundaries, strength, support, and direction.  But such longing was generally thought to be intellectually dishonest because Science seemed to have discredited Religion as wishful thinking, unsupported by scientific evidence.  D. H. Lawrence writing in 1929 describes what he suggests might be a possible substitute for religion, an acceptance of this 'immortal chaos':

When The Fruit Falls
When the ripe fruit falls
its sweetness distills and trickles away into the veins of the earth. 

When fulfilled people die
the essential oil of their experience enters
the veins of living space, and adds a glisten
to the atom, to the body of immortal chaos.

For space is alive
and it stirs like a swan
whose feathers glisten
silky with oil of distilled experience.

The grandness and scope of King David, Shakespeare, and even the 19th century appears to have given way to melancholy.   Many felt that love of God and Man is beyond our ability - or takes too much energy - and we should be honest with each other about these limitations, as seen in this poem by James Agee (1910-1955):

"No doubt left..."
No doubt left.  Enough deceiving.
Now I know you do not love.
Now you know I do not love.
Now we know we do not love.
Now more doubt.  No more deceiving.

Yet there is pity in us for each other
And better times are almost fresh as true.
The dog returns.  And the man to his mother.
And tides.  And you to me.  And I to you.

And we are cowardly kind the cruelest way,
Feeling the cliff unmorsel from our heels
And knowing balance gone, we smile, and stay
A little, whirling our arms like desperate wheels.

In the next poem, Weldon Kees (1914-1955) 'thinks about the human condition'. He exhudes an existential feeling of ennui and anomie that became popular in the 40's and 50's.  Life and death is seen as somewhat random and meaningless, similar to items that are swept in and out by with the waves at the beach, where people die and 'old fruit comes in and is left, and dries in the sun':

The Beach in August
The day the fat woman
In the bright blue bathing suit
Walked into the water and died,
I thought about the human condition.  Pieces of old fruit
Came in and were left by the tide. 

What I thought about the human
Condition was this:  old fruit
Comes in and is left, and dries
In the sun.  Another fat woman
In a dull green bathing suit
Dives into the water and dies.
The pulmotors glisten.  It is noon.

We dry and die in the sun
While the seascape arranges old fruit,
Coming in with the tide, glistening
At noon.  A woman, moderately stout,
In a nondescript bathing suit,
Swims to a pier.  A tall woman
Steps toward the sea.  One thinks about the human
Condition.  The tide goes in and goes out.

So what are we to do with life in such a pointless and empty world?  Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) suggests that instead of paying attention to the annoying 'girls in heaven' or 'shooting each other',  we should enjoy ourselves and play baseball:

The Origin of Baseball
Someone had been walking in and out
Of the world without coming
To much decision about anything.
The sun seemed too hot most of the time.

There weren't enough birds around
And the hills had a silly look
When he got on top of one.
The girls in heaven, however, thought

Nothing of asking to see his watch
Like you would want someone to tell
A joke - "Time," they'd say, "what's
That mean - time?", laughing with the edges

Of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper
In a madhouse.  And he'd stumble over
General Sherman or Elizabeth B.
Browning, muttering, "Can't you keep

Your big wings out of the aisle?"  But down
Again, there'd be millions of people without
Enough to eat and men with guns just
Standing there shooting each other.

So he wanted to throw something
And he picked up a baseball.

Again we have the feeling of the aimlessness of life, with people not 'coming to much decision about anything.'  The lefthanded allusion to a possible spiritual world is trivialized into 'girls of heaven' (assumedly angels) that just annoy people with their irritating jokes about time, and laugh 'with the edges of their white mouths, like a flutter of paper in a madhouse.'  In this context, preoccupation with baseball and other such diversions seems as good a solution to boredom as any.

Then came World War II, with a greater display of Barbarism than history had ever seen.  Instead of providing the tools for Utopia, Science provided the tools to kill people by the tens of millions.  The 'ism's that were produced by Man's Reason, instead of leading us to peace and harmony, gave Barbarians the rationale to kill and destroy in the name of progress.  While the intelligentsia disparaged belief in God, and Science and Religion squabbled, Barbarism flourished. Though one could argue that it was people who abandoned Religion and used Reason to justify Barbarism, some blamed what happened on God being 'indifferent', as seen in this poem by Richard Eberhart (1904-) written in 1944 towards the end of World War II:

The Fury of Aerial Bombardment (3 of 4 stanzas)
You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent.  He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant. 

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies.

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?

Eberhart is suggesting that despite Man's attempts to advance by means of Religion and Reason, perhaps the Barbarian is destined to triumph because the 'Beast' is 'no farther advanced than in his ancient furies'.

Some sought refuge in drugs, but that seemed to be a dead end as chronicled by Allen Ginsburg in this poem that became the anthem of the 'beat' movement:

Howl (only first few lines)
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
               hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for
               an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to
               the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in
               the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across
               the tops of cities contemplating jazz

So what are we left with? What happened to the grand visions of the 19th century, predicting that Man's great capacity for Reason and Love were supposed to blossom?  Not much, 'because the world has failed us', as seen in this poem by Charles Bukowski    (1920- ):

The Tragedy of the Leaves
I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead
the potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness;
the sun was still good, though,
and my landlady's note cracked in fine and
undemanding yellowness; what was needed now
was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester
with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd
because it exists, nothing more;
I shaved carefully with an old razor
the man who had once been young and
said to have genius; but
that's the tragedy of the leaves,
the dead ferns, the dead plants;
and I walked into the dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both.

Not only do people despair at loving God with King David's passion, but look what has happened to Shakespeare's love between men and women, as expressed by Richard Brautigan (1935- ):

Romeo and Juliet
If you will die for me,
I will die for you 

and our graves will
be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat.

If you will bring the soap,
I will bring the bleach.

We want to include some words from a few popular songs, though they may not be great poetry, to give the flavor of our current popular culture.  Here are excerpts from two songs by The Beastie Boys from an album that sold four million copies a few years ago. 

Fight for Your Right To Party
Your pop caught you smoking and he said, "No way."
That hypocrite smokes two packs a day
Man, living at home is such a drag
Now your mom threw away your best porno mag (Bust it!) 

You gotta fight
For your right
To party

 Rhymin' and Stealin'
Torchin' and crackin' and rhymin' and stealin'
Robbin' and rapin', bustin' two in the ceiling
I'm wheelin', I'm dealin', I'm drinkin', not thinkin'
Never cower, never shower, and I'm always stinkin'
Yo ho ho and a pint of Brass Monkey
And when my girlie shakes her hips, she sure gets funky
We drink and rob and rhyme and pillage

Looking back on the twentieth century, we can see that Religion has been hurt by the skepticism of Science, and Science has not been successful in keeping the Barbarian at bay, as evidenced by the two World Wars.  This has shaken Man's confidence in Religion and Science, the two great pillars of civilization.  We see this disappointment reflected in modern poetry, exhibiting a mental state that a psychologist might diagnose as 'clinically depressed'. 

Perhaps the Beastie Boys glorify 'party'ing and romanticize the Barbarism of pirates as an antidote to this depression.  Our popular culture may give Barbarism legitimacy and credibility because it doesn't find suitable alternative heros from a Religion and Science that it feels has been discredited.  However, both Reason and Religion traditionally warn us about the dangers of a society that legitimizes Barbarism.