As January rolls around, we want to look ahead to a promising new year. Unfortunately, daily news depresses optimism and dissuades hope.
It steadily sinks the spirit: the immigration policy that detains and deports many immigrants who are simply seeking better lives for themselves; we have a president who brags about this inhumane policy to cheering Maga crowds; there is the pay for play funding scheme to build a garish, ballroom; the new presidential plaques lining the White House wall exalting Trump while vilifying three former presidents whose reputations continue to threaten his childish ego.
Of course, there are the illegal Drone strikes in the Caribbean and the Epstein files cover up.
With all this, and so much more, multitudes still not only support this president, but also worship this appalling narcissist. Why? Why do so many fail to be revolted by his daily mendacity? Why are so many indifferent to the callous cruelty and the conspicuous cupidity of this administration? Perhaps a few poems by Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden will give us a little insight into why.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) is one of the great giants of English literature, was a keen analyst of human nature and a brilliant judge of literature. Having written essays, literary biographyies, poetry, a play, even the first dictionary of the English language, he clearly understood why humans chase their delusive desires, even when common sense thunders the foolishness of their choices. In The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated, and its effects. Accordingly, his Dictionary defines vanity as “uncertainty,” “fruitless desire,” and “falsehood,”
The poem’s first twenty-eight lines illustrate how the pursuit and realization of wishes, i.e., dreams of political power, financial success, intellectual achievement, and physical beauty, are futile and never bring true or lasting happiness.
The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal, Imitated Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind, from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life; Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate, 5 O’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate, Where wav’ring man, betray’d by vent’rous pride To tread the dreary paths without a guide, As treach’rous phantoms in the mist delude, Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good. 10 How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice, Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice, How nations sink, by darling schemes oppress’d, When vengeance listens to the fool’s request. Fate wings with ev’ry wish th’ afflictive dart, 15 Each gift of nature, and each grace of art, With fatal heat impetuous courage glows, With fatal sweetness elocution flows, Impeachment stops the speaker’s pow’rful breath, And restless fire precipitates on death. 20 But scarce observ’d the knowing and the bold, Fall in the gen’ral massacre of gold; Wide-wasting pest! that rages unconfin’d, And crowds with crimes the records of mankind, For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws, 25 For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws; Wealth heap’d on wealth, nor truth nor safety buys, The dangers gather as the treasures rise.
Johnson establishes straight away his intention. In stanza 1, he tells the readers to open their eyes to see “how hope and fear, desire and hate / Ov’erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate” and “pride,” that architect of high-flown ideas, misleads “wav’ring man” as he pursues “fancied ills, or airy good.” Reason “rarely…guides” decision making, “[r]ules” or “prompts” what men do or say. “[N]ations” are oppressed by the “darling” (favorite) schemes” of their leaders who seek vengeance against perceived enemies. In stanza 2, the speaker observes that the lust for money corrupts even men who should be above reproach: that men “But scarce observe, the knowing and the bold / Fall in the ger’ral massacre of gold.” The desire for gold induces the “ruffian” to rob his victims and the “judge” to distort the “laws.”
Johnson continues his survey to observe and display a world dominated by ambition, cruelty, treachery, pride, arrogance, greed, and, of course, vanity. He develops five categories of the types of wishes that drive men and women: political power (lines 73-134), intellectual achievement (lines 135-174), military glory (lines 175-254), longevity (lines 255-318), and physical beauty (lines 319-344). In lines 345-368, Johnson argues that only Christian humility and prayer can rescue the weak human mind and concludes with the thought that “celestial Wisdom calms the Mind, / And makes the Happiness she does not find.” Here is a link to the full poem.
Perhaps Johnson’s poem overwhelms the reader with its variety of human wishes that delude men and women into pursuing irrational desires. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) simplifies Johnson’s critique of humanity with his sonnet “The World is Too Much with Us.” In it, Wordsworth censures the growing materialism in England in the early eighteenth century.
The World Is Too Much With Us The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
In this simple sonnet, Wordsworth exhorts his readers to recognize how their lives are wasted by their obsession with material goods, their “Getting and spending.” Instead of giving in to materialism, that “sordid boon” they value most of all, his readers must take note of the “Sea that bares her bosom to the moon” and “The winds that will be howling at all hours.” Unfortunately, they “are out of tune” with nature and unmoved by its sublime beauty and power. Like Johnson, Wordsworth is repelled by human behavior, specifically the materialism that consumes men and women. Whereas Johnson sees prayer as a means to heal the fallen human soul, Wordsworth reckons no words will rescue society from the power of materialism. Instead, he chooses to imagine himself transported to ancient days where he might see “Proteus rising from the sea; / Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”
In the lines (1-4) denouncing materialism and loss of spirituality, Wordsworth implies also a rebuke of social conformity. The collective pronouns “us” and “we” coupled with the phrases “The world is too much with,” and “Getting and spending” amalgamate all English citizens as a uniform mass of materialistic beings. This conformity dehumanized, in Wordsworth’s eyes, his fellow countrymen and women. A little more than a hundred years later, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) saw another kind of conformity, equally contemptible but certainly more destructive.
The Leaders of the Crowd They must to keep their certainty accuse All that are different of a base intent; Pull down established honour; hawk for news Whatever their loose fantasy invent And murmur it with bated breath, as though The abounding gutter had been Helicon Or calumny a song. How can they know Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone, And there alone, that have no solitude? So the crowd come they care not what may come. They have loud music, hope every day renewed And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb.
At the start of this post, I asked why so many support Trump. In Yeats’s poem we find a partial answer. A political leader can be adept at persuading his followers with facile slogans and scurrilous claims about political opponents. Trump has utilized both means to convince millions to support him. Like the “Leaders” in Yeats’s poem, he accuses all who disagree with him of “base intent.” He attempts to create (“hawk”) the “news” through lies and outrageous claims and has been successful at dominating the news’s cycle with his ceaseless bluster. Yeats believed that “Truth flourish[ed] where the student’s lamp has shone,” and maybe he was right. But does such truth have the capacity to shine bright enough to illuminate the minds of the “crowd” swayed by the “loud music" or as Trump has managed to do: “with calumnious art / Of counterfeited truth thus held their ears.” (PL, V 770-771) The poem’s last 6 words leave us uncertain. Are those words spoken by Yeats or do they come from the leaders? If from the leaders, then they are mocking the speaker’s claim, but not necessarily diminishing its truth. If they are the poet’s belief, then Yeats is saying that truth and honor can only exist in solitude or does truth always perish in the loud music of the crowd. I leave it to the reader to decide which interpretation is right.
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