Real Toads And Imaginary Gardens MAXINE GREENE Brooklyn College

Author of Education in American Literature, to make, without warranty, a statement that Dr. Greene is here concerned 'with one of sounds like a factual one. Being empirically our age's strangest paradoxes: a unverifiable, it is not, of course, what it widespread and desperate concern with seems. Nevertheless, the individual who "meaninglessness" at the same time that makes such a claim is very likely to arouse exact knowledge exceeds even the dreams responses of recognition. He may, in fact, of 25 years ago. It is this problem that find it hard to believe that anyone could invests the humanities with significance in a seriously disagree. He becomes like culture whose major motif is science. How Nietzsche's Zarathustra: " 'Could it be the literary experience can help us to cope possible? This old saint in the forest has not with man's inevitable "unanswerable yet heard anything of this, that God is questions" is the subject of this article. dead!'"

NO PREVIOUS GENERATION of young THE TIME'S DILEMMA people has produced as many

mathematicians and theoretical scientists as We confront, then, an apparent dilemma. this one. We have never before seen so The tested and intellectually responsible many adepts of the calculus or the forms of methods of inquiry cannot help us very logic, nor have we seen such a large much where the really significant existential proportion of youthful experts in fields problems are concerned. The arbitrary or requiring formal and abstract competencies. "emotive" methods which arouse such

widespread affective responses seem to be Yet this is also the generation reared in intellectually disreputable. There is value crisis and discussions of considerable evidence, however, that the "meaninglessness." Even when we grant the unanswerable moral questions cannot be differences between subscribers to the legislated into insignificance. They nag at Scientific American and enthusiasts of young people and eventually find behavioral "Howl," we cannot assume that those who expression—in aloofness, cynicism, "sick succeed in the more rigorous specialties jokes," a fascination with the perverse, or as have escaped the moral predicament of our in Pop Art, with the dissociated "objects" on time. If they show fewer signs of anomie or the surfaces of life. (Or, it might be added, in boredom than other young people, they are becoming a fan of the Beatles, a convert to not necessarily indicating that they are more a politician's charisma, or a compulsive sanguine about the "good" and the "right." devotee to "making the scene.") They may simply assume that nothing

meaningful can be said about matters which Surely, the teachers of the young must are not susceptible to empirical test. When attend to phenomena like these and they confront one of the more troubling consider what they mean. It is not just a moral issues of the day (the "banality of evil" matter of becoming informed and vicariously in the Eichmann case, or certain ambiguities involved. It is a matter of determining respecting civil rights), they may find it no whether there are means of countering the easier to justify their responses than do the tendency to act as if meaninglessness were poets of despair or the youth who "play it ontologically real. cool."

To assert that nothing meaningful can be OF CHAIRS AND UNICORNS said is to abide by a set of rules governing a particular "game" of language or inquiry. To This essay is an attempt to explore some do the opposite—to say, for example, that uses of imaginative literature in meeting the universe is objectively meaningless—is what appears to be an acute educational

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University need. There may be, in authentic literary been one of the Comforters who came to experiences, some potentiality for Job. developing a sense of meaningfulness congruent with what we logically and Irresponsible, uninformed, fearful, or sad— empirically know to be "real" and "true." It the particular form of human failure may be that readers gain even more than described does indeed account for the what Phenix calls "personal knowledge" (7) "mysticism" of many young people, for their from becoming engaged and momentarily insistence on counting fantasies as true. It absorbed in certain works of art, when they must be recalled, however, that the sciences are given opportunities to reflect upon what no longer provide visual or verbal models to they have felt and seen. They may be counteract the pull of private fictions or the helped in choosing stances to take, actions personal imagings defined in response to to perform. They may be helped in defining need. We no longer have Dante's three- experiential orders in the neutral universe tiered universe to serve as external control the sciences describe. or the Newtonian watch-universe ticking dependably away in absolute space and The universe described by the sciences time. constitutes the only "real" universe there is. To deny this is to give way to what Sidney ANSWERABLE QUESTIONS Hook has called a contemporary failure of

nerve (5). For him, this failure denotes a Oppenheimer, for one, has explained that in "loss of confidence in scientific methods" each scientific specialty, the terminology is and, as seriously, a pursuit of "a 'knowledge' so specialized that it is "almost unintelligible and 'truth' which are uniquely different from except to the men who have worked in the those won by the processes of scientific field" (6). In the last half century, the inquiry." They are different in that they are scientific concepts used to order sense undependable, whereas scientific experience have become less and less conclusions are not. Undependable, often susceptible to formulation in ordinary wish-fulfilling and whimsical, they may language. Scientists have become subject men to "delusion." When distinctions progressively less capable of showing are not properly made between that which is pictures of the regularities they discern, less reliable and that which is not, when methods likely to point to models in the shared, of finding out are not differentiated, the familiar world. Their constructs and question of meaningfulness becomes equations, therefore, lack the affective hopelessly obscured. In a world where power of Ptolemy's and Newton's unicorns are no less deserving of a status in visualizable cosmic orders. But it is those reality than dining room chairs, confusion very constructs and equations which provide multiplies—and so, in a related sense, does the truths which enable us to make meaninglessness. predictions, to extend our control over

nature, dependably to "know." A recognition that this is the case appears to

be essential for adequate "reality The point is that only factual and formal perception" in a scientific age. But such questions are actually answerable. This is recognition cannot simply be prescribed. because they are framed in such a way that Professor Hook blames the failure he they point towards certain empirical and speaks of on "a flight from responsibility." It logical operations which are taken to be the is as if he has no patience with those who only reliable methods of seeking knowledge find it difficult to grasp scientific constructs or of the truth. Since, in these days, the truth with those who find it hard to accept the finally reached is likely to be most properly notion that the symbolisms used in the expressed in abstract, often "empty" terms, various sciences represent all we are now it is understandable that those in search of a entitled to call "real." It is much as if he were stable framework, a sustaining cosmos, blaming ignorance and incapacity on some sometimes lose their "nerve." original—or acquired—sin. One can only

wonder what he would have said if he had

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University It is understandable that some react like the which are not. A noncognitive expression or waiter in Ernest Hemingway's "A Clean, communication is most commonly taken to Well-Lighted Place" and feel, as he does, be an expression or communication of that "It was a nothing that he knew too well. emotion. In the Crocean school of It was all a nothing, and a man was nothing aesthetics, art is said to communicate too." It is understandable that others "intuitive knowledge" without relation to the respond to Camus's description of "the intellect; and this, while somewhat different hopeless encounter between human from emotion, is equally noncognitive. Then questioning and the silence of the universe" there is the conception of the "unconscious," (2). The universe seemed dreadfully silent the "irrational," which is, by definition, when President Kennedy was killed, when a noncognitive. bomb exploded in a Birmingham church, when three young men were murdered in a No art form can be totally devoid of emotive Mississippi town. The questions arise, no content; and it is unlikely that a work of art matter what; and there are no answers. can be created unless the unconscious ("the "Why?" people ask. "How could it happen to well," as Hemingway called it) is crucially them—to him?" They want truth when they involved. It does not follow from this, ask, even when they know there are no however, that works of art, by their very answers. Is it any wonder that they speak of nature, lack cognitive content. meaninglessness? Is it any wonder that, when they hear the silence, they despair? This is particularly clear where literature is concerned because literature, after all, is The difficulty often is that "meaning" is read made of words. Henry D. Aiken has said that too narrowly. "The realm of meanings is the aesthetic appeal of literature is largely wider than that of true-and-false meanings; it due to the cognitive meanings conveyed by is more urgent and more fertile . . . ," John the language used. Like all verbal symbols, Dewey once wrote. He went on: those used in literature function denotatively and connotatively. Ideas, interests, When the claim of meanings to truth enters memories are addressed; so are moods, in, then truth is indeed preeminent. But this feelings, and even fantasies. Aiken writes, fact is often confused with the idea that truth "The predominant power of words to arouse, has a claim to enter everywhere, that it has sustain, and project emotion is a function, monopolistic jurisdiction. Poetic meanings, not of their quality as sounds, but of their moral meanings, a large part of the goods of meaning—and in this case, their cognitive life are matters of richness and freedom of meaning" (1). He has in mind the "wider meanings, rather than of truth. . . . (4) realm" again, rather than "true-and-false meanings," which are not the prime It is in this wider realm that teachers have an business of art. To support his point, we opportunity to work to overcome the failure need only recall a few first lines—such as of nerve. It is here, among "matters of these from William Faulkner's The Bear, richness and freedom of meanings," that Carson McCuller's The Member of the they can make it possible for their students Wedding, and T. S. Eliot's "Journey of the to endure confrontation and at once avoid Magi." despair. And it is here, of course, that the literary encounter may serve to counter the Faulkner, to begin: "There was a man and a sense of meaninglessness—if it is an dog too this time. Two beasts, counting Old authentic one, and if the necessary Ben, the bear, and two men, counting Boon distinctions are made. Hogganbeck. . . ." Then McCullers: "It happened that green and crazy summer CRUCIAL DISTINCTIONS when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she

had not been a member." And, finally, Eliot: There are two sorts of distinctions: one

between the noncognitive and the cognitive, A cold coming we had of it, the other between cognitive meanings which Just the worst time of the year are truth-meanings and cognitive meanings For a journey, and such a long journey:

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University The ways deep and the weather sharp, emotions that pulled at them, separated The very dead of winter. them from the density of things, and made them part of a new order, as the surf flows in A fragment, at best, can be only vaguely and carries off pebbles, grains of sand, evocative; but the lines selected may make chips of glass, when it withdraws into the clear that the use of words often makes sea. cognitive meaning inescapable even when "truth" is neither being prepared for nor told. The sea is analogous to the strange new And this makes it all the more important to context in which the perceived toads or urns keep the distinctions among cognitive or faces now exist. It is the artist's context, meanings in mind. The integrity of scientific the consciousness of the poet. The poet's methods must be protected. Literature must imagination transmutes the particulars, be kept free to release a world of meanings, changes them, gives them symbolic form. to permit wide and complex orders to be Toads or urns or faces are remade made. deliberately, patterned in accord with the feelings they have aroused. A PLACE FOR THE GENUINE Transformed, the perceived toads, for

instance, become toads more literal, more Marianne Moore, in a poem called "Poetry," concrete, than actual toads, once their has said some of this: garden is entered by a reader. In day-today

life, toads are generally invisible in their I, too, dislike it; there are things that are singularity. For scientists, they are merely important beyond all this fiddle. representative of a species. For gardeners Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt or visitors to gardens, they tend to blend for it, one discovers in it after all, a place for with the dust; or they function in the organic the genuine. life of gardens, or they provoke dismayed

recoils. It takes an imaginary garden to The poem goes on to challenge poetry that make toads horticulturally useless, to becomes "unintelligible," perhaps because it remove4 their power to startle, and to make is confused with discursive prose. Then it them significant as forms. continues:

nor is it valid to discriminate "against VISIONS OF POSSIBILITY business documents and school books"; all these phenomena are important. If the toads in works of art are misconceived, One must make a distinction however: . . . . if their felt "realness" is confused with veritable existence in the natural world, they It is as if a refusal to make the distinction lose their significance as illusions, and their threatens both the discursive and the expressive power decays. Works of art nondiscursive—and a variety of cognitive function as experiences only when they are meanings as well. In this poem, poets are to viewed as presentations, not be "literalists of the imagination" who representations or revelations or present "for inspection, imaginary gardens commentaries. They are realizations of with real toads in them." This suggests what certain possibilities in the particulars that "genuine" signifies; and it brings us back to compose them. They are self-sufficient the nature of literature as an art form, and at entities once they are formed; they are length to its potentialities in combatting organic structures, complete unto meaninglessness. themselves. Like John Keats's Grecian urn, each one is a still presence, "a foster-child The poet's garden may suggest some of silence and slow time." In its presentness, aesthetic ordering, the form that is created it means nothing except as it is experienced. when imagination goes to work on selected When it is experienced, meaning may particulars in the world. Whatever they are— happen, suddenly or gradually. It can only toads, Grecian urns, or faces in a crowd— happen in relation to a human these particulars have been selected by consciousness.

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University tension and entanglement. He has to be free The event becomes significant, however, to search for the resolution his own emotion when there is an awareness of the demands. If he is being "taught" the novel, meanings occurring. A literary experience the teacher's concern ought to be primarily can only be "integral," as Dewey said (3), or for the student reader's naturalness and complete when the consummation reached ease, for his release into the work of art. involves such awareness. An encounter Given enough ability to read freely, there is which achieves authenticity, therefore, is usually a good possibility that the feelings one which culminates in a reflective activity aroused in a reader will magnetize a variety of exploration and patterning. That which is of energies, perceptions, and ideas to be explored and patterned is some dimension patterned in accord with the form of the of the reader's own existential history. Form book. is imposed upon the flow of concepts, images, and codifications making up that The Catcher in the Rye or any other work of history. The feelings pervading it are formed art "means" this variety formed in a manner as well, and the form is fed by the roots new to the reader. Since sense sui generis reaching underground. A literary experience and unique in the world, awareness of what is complete, in other words, when a work of this novel patterning signifies depends on literature leads a reader into himself—to the reader's ability—and opportunity—to reflect, to reflect upon, and to re-form his reflect upon what he has seen and felt after "image" of his world. the experience is complete. It is here that the teacher and the class have crucial roles Illustrations may clarify the connections to play. between this process and the nurture of meaningfulness. There is, for instance, J. D. Students frequently do not realize that they Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, which have discerned new highlights and nuances has so often served to generate intense in their own histories until they talk or write experiences among the young although it about what they have experienced in states no verifiable truth, reveals no facts something they have read. The very process about man's condition in the modern age. It of putting the experience into words helps to deals with a brief time in the life of young organize what has been undergone. Once Holden Caulfield, who is seeking candor and expressed, it becomes a kind of content, a compassion in a "phony" adult world. It structure which may well give rise to requires a certain suspension of disbelief if a questions never framed before. reader is to enter into Holden's quest and abide, for a while, by its rules. Having encountered, say, Holden's fantasy about becoming a catcher in the rye, the Once a reader is engaged, however, his reader may well ask (later, when the reading consciousness is tapped on several levels is done) questions which have to do with as he reenacts in imagination what he adolescent psychology. Having moved reads. He is most likely to "understand" the imaginatively through the city streets, the story in terms of his own recollected playgrounds, the park, he may define adolescence, perhaps in an American city or problems only sociology can resolve. He town. The more he can summon up of may thus be led into a search for meanings adolescent disgust and disillusionment, the in several fields, each one characterized by more he will be engaged. The more adult a particular type of methodology, specific observations and ideas he can integrate with cognitive controls. his memories, the richer and more complex will become the perspective through which Choosing to enter into any single field he sees. means choosing to accept appropriate conventions. The teacher, helping students UNDERSTANDING VIA FEELINGS to make distinctions as they extend their searching, may be creating occasions for

the perception of many sorts of meanings But he has to f eel what he is undergoing. and, at once, permitting aesthetic meaning He has to respond emotionally to an initial to become clear. The student reader may

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University become clearer about where he stands in a words" and move to break through the field of distinguishable meanings. Knowing "seeming" and to act. more about what he has been about, he may be enabled to choose himself afresh. It is his action which, at length, sets things He may be enabled to choose a right. Once the duel is fought at the end, commitment in some defined area and Hamlet has not only worked his revenge; he thereby focus his concerns with some has restored health, purpose, and meaning authentic end in every artistic presentation is to the community. His death does not alter in some view. the fact that he has become a full prince and done what a prince must do. Before dying, THE LITERARY ENCOUNTER he asks Horatio to tell his story in order to clear his "wounded name." Horatio is to let

men know what has happened and, by the This constitutes the sense of telling of it, perhaps to make some meaningfulness that may derive from literary difference in the world. This may make the encounters. It is surely not accidental that events of the Danish past cognitively the symbolic action it involves so closely meaningful for those who have not resembles the action of the dramatic and witnessed them. In a profound sense, especially the tragic hero: Job, Oedipus, however, meaninglessness has already Hamlet, Lear. Also—not accidentally—it been overcome—in action rather than resembles the action in certain modern words, in and through a man's choice of works of fiction: Billy Budd, for example, himself and his commitment to do his work. Heart of Darkness, The Plague, Catch-22.

And this, too, leads back to the Hamlet may exemplify this most sharply. contemporary problem of meaninglessness. The beginning, it will be remembered, is The point is that there is no factual or obscurity, an atmosphere of rational answer to be found when questions meaninglessness, in almost the sense with are asked like those aroused by the death of which we began. The unease of the Hamlet—or the death of John F. Kennedy. sentries, the cold darkness of the ramparts, To seek such an answer is too often to give the groping to explain the Ghost—all is way to the failure of nerve because only mysterious, "A mote to trouble the mind's mystical, visionary answers are available. To eye." The uncertainties multiply as the play deny the need for an answer, however, is to proceeds. Nighttime and strange sounds are suffer a dreadful apathy, to say "What does not the only things that confound. Murder it matter?" after all. The alternative, begins to preoccupy the mind. Love and suggested by so many modes of literary restiveness trouble one man; the threat of experience, is to define one's self against disorder troubles another. There is the the inscrutable and within one's vague corruption overlaying the state, community—to take action to create causing things to be "rotten in the state of direction, to become a kind of prince. Denmark" from the heights to the depths.

Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, and Hamlet THE HUMAN COMMITMENT frame their hypotheses and test them in action. What they do is determined by their Tragedy, of course, gives this exemplary positions with respect to the "sickness" form; but many works of literature offer pervading all things. Hamlet, the prince who kindred occasions. Even Salinger's novel, ought to be king, bears the crucial concluding with the image of a carrousel, responsibility to "set things right"; and so it is culminates in a need to choose: "Don't ever Hamlet who, by testing and incorporating tell anybody anything. If you do, you start every guess and gesture made by others, missing everybody." This is not basically must "by indirections find directions out." He different from Hamlet's appeal to Horatio, for must discover what is real and distinguish it Holden has already begun to "sort of miss from what is nothing but a projection from everybody I told about." He has made his own "bad dreams." He must cease to contact, almost in spite of himself; he has despise himself for relieving his "heart with taken action against the "phony" world by

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University telling. And yet there are no answers, as conventions of society" and is committed, Holden admits when D.B. asks him what all therefore, to remaining alive. the stuff he has told about means. "If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I BEYOND US YET OURSELVES think about it." For him, too, and for the

reader, "there are more things on heaven Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness may and earth" than are dreamt of in Horatio's— serve as a summary of what it signifies to or anyone else's—philosophy. search for meaningfulness in a world where

the constructs of the scientists represent the One must take action, even so. In Herman "real." This is the account of Mariow's Melville's Billy Buddy the hero may be taken journey down an African river, through the to be Captain Vere, since the Captain is the Congo and into the depths of himself. one who makes significant choices as the Because it is a story of confrontation, a tale moves on. A reader cannot identify with plunge into a darkness that can only be the totally innocent Billy or with the evil combatted by the most deliberately wrought Claggert, cursed with a "natural depravity." forms, it brings us back to where we began. He can only reenact the Captain's tragic

choosing, the Captain's encompassing of "The truth is hidden—luckily." In our own good and evil in the midst of ambiguous terms, there is no truthful answer to the nature, on the sea. Men's allegiance, he questions Marlow must ask, to the knows, is not to nature; and, severe as man- existential questions. There is the job of made laws may be, human beings must piloting the riverboat through a jungle that is abide by them. To appeal beyond them—to inscrutable, past the tempting cries of the heart, to natural compassion—would be, savages along the banks. And there is the for the anguished Captain, to fail in nerve as telling about it later—in Mar-low's case, to well as responsibility. people who are too safe to understand. He

tells them they will never really understand It is clear to "Starry" Vere where duty lies. It because of the "solid pavement under your is clear that "measured forms are feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to everything." And there is no sustaining cheer you or to fall on you, stepping answer to questions about why the delicately between the butcher and the Handsome Sailor has to die. "Everything is policeman. . . ." for a term remarkable in navies." Men

proceed, doing their work against oblivion. In our case, the pavement is no longer solid For the Captain, for the reader, there for many people. The younger generation remains the arch of created forms and cannot step delicately, since there is little meanings, the sole barrier against chaos protection left. The danger of denial, and the ambiguous threat of the sea. abstractness, or despair is great. It may be

more necessary than ever before to "fall As in the case of Hemingway's early heroes, back on your own innate strength, your own one can only do what one has to do "with capacity for faithfulness," and, still in style," even when one knows that "the world Conrad's words, "your power of devotion, kills everyone, the very brave and the very not to yourself, but to an obscure, back- good. . . ." Like Dr. Rieux, in Albert Camus's breaking business. . . ." The Plague, one fights the plague because it

is "only logical," even though one knows It is obscure because anything is possible, there is no cure. One says, as Rieux does, and because the questions science cannot "it is my job," because there is no other way answer are so ubiquitous in modern life. to survive. Or, like Yossarian, in the absurd Nevertheless, our work, our business, goes whirl of Joseph Heller's Catch-22, one takes on. In an important sense, it is the work of the risk of being called manic-depressive searching after truths that are dependable. It and admits to being "antagonistic to the idea is the business of using intelligence to adapt of being robbed, exploited, degraded, what is discovered by the sciences to the humiliated, or deceived." Why? For no service of mankind. Since the days of sound or defensible reason. Merely because Socrates, there has been no more promising one decides that one is "too good for all the

Teachers College Record Copyright (c) Teachers College, Columbia University ideal than the freeing of the human mind. It They said, "you have a blue guitar, is our business now to enlarge its freedom, You do not play things as they are." to strengthen human nerve enough to permit mindfulness to be chosen over bigotry, The man replied, "Things as they are superstition, wishfulness, and the simplism Are changed upon the blue guitar." of anti-intellectual "common sense." And they said then, "But play you must, And this is the prime reason for making A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, required distinctions, for combatting meaninglessness. Nothing can erode the A tune upon the blue guitar commitment to mindfulness more than the Of things exactly as they are." feeling that "it is all a nothing." What, then, is the point if it is all "Nada"? Yet if we ask for REFERENCES truth-meanings as we search for what it is, the only response we can get is "Nada" or 1. Aiken, H. D. Some notes concerning the the "silence" of which Camus wrote. aesthetic and the cognitive. In Philipson, M. (Ed.) Aesthetics today. New York: Meridian, There remains the option of creating forms, 1961. since "measured forms are everything." There remains the hope of action in the light 2. Camus, A. The rebel. New York: Knopf, of created images of dignity, of decency, of 1954. work. This is where imaginative literature can help us on our way. Forming experience 3. Dewey, J. Art as experience. New York: by means of our encounters with it, we can Minton, Balch, & Co., 1934. choose the stand we must take, the gesture we can make, when we confront what 4. Dewey, J. Experience and nature. New cannot be resolved in factual terms. We can York: Dover, 1958. enact meaningfulness as we shape our illusions of purpose, our images, our forms. 5. Hook, S. Naturalism and democracy. In In doing so, we can create values as we live, Krikorian, Y. (Ed.) 'Naturalism and the values susceptible to continual remaking— human spirit New York: Columbia Univer. "beyond us," as Wallace Stevens puts it, Press, 1944. Pp. 40-64. "yet ourselves." And in "The Man With the Blue Guitar," he says some things about the 6. Oppenheimer, J. R. Science and culture. literary artist or the literary imagination which Encounter, 1962 (October), 19, 7-10. may serve as last things here, since they may remind us once again of meaning, and 7. Phenix, P. Realms of meaning. New York: the need to seek out meanings, in the McGraw-Hill, 1964. service of the truth:

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