Along with the next section of the great 1949 lecture by Eli Siegel Poetry and Keenness, we publish an article by Aesthetic Realism consultant Bennett Cooperman: "The Big Mistake of Husbands." It is part of a paper he presented this winter at an Aesthetic Realism public seminar. 

     Among the poems Mr. Siegel discusses in Poetry and Keenness are five by Emily Dickinson. And so, to illustrate the principles of Aesthetic Realism, I have the pleasure now of commenting on passages from some letters of hers. This woman of Amherst, Massachusetts, who was in such notable ways so keen, also represents, in her confusion and hopes, men and women today. 

     One of the most famous letters in American literature is the letter Emily Dickinson wrote on April 15, 1862 to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, after reading an article of his in the Atlantic Monthly. She wanted criticism from him about her poetry, and began her letter with this sentence: "Are you too deeply occupied to say if my Verse is alive?"

     That sentence is beautiful. And the reason for its beauty is in the following Aesthetic Realism principle, which describes too the largest need of Emily Dickinson’s life and everyone’s life: "All beauty," Mr. Siegel wrote, "is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." Emily Dickinson’s opening question to Higginson has first, in the meaning of the words and their sound, a quality of pondering, of interior intricacy, of a self (the Higginson self) concerned with its own thoughts: "Are you too deeply occupied..." The three oo sounds seem to brood; the ps, formed with lips coming together, make for a feeling here of self involved with itself. And then, there is an emerging into something so different — that sharp, glowing, urgent, world-vital matter which makes the previous pondering look petty in comparison: "to say if my Verse is alive?" The vs cut, severely yet sweetly. The soaring i in the grandeur of that word alive continues the dimmer i in the questioned word occupied. The sentence is a swift thrust, critical; yet considerate too. 

     Throughout Emily Dickinson’s letters there are prose sentences that are poetic—good for the same reason her poems are largely good: they are a oneness of reality’s opposites. Her sentences poke and glow. And they often make a one of meditativeness and sharpness. Therefore they have that which Eli Siegel showed is the decisive thing in poetry: music. 

     Eli Siegel was the true, courageous, faithful critic, of art and selves, for whom humanity has thirsted. He had both the great knowledge and kindness to "tell... what is true," and I love him unboundedly for it — as Emily Dickinson would have. In another letter to Higginson, #268, dated July 1862, she writes these lovely words about criticism: "Will you tell me my fault, frankly..., for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon, to commend—the Bone, but to set it, Sir, and fracture within, is more critical. And for this, Preceptor, I shall bring you...every gratitude I know." 

     Emily Dickinson was a poet because of the strength of her desire to like the world. This is the desire that impels art. We see it, for example, in the letter I have just quoted from. Higginson apparently asked for a picture of her, and the Amherst lady responds as follows: "I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut bur — and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves—Would this do just as well?" The biggest opposites in our lives are Self and World; and to like the world is to feel its simultaneous difference from and kinship with ourselves. That is what Emily Dickinson does in this humorous, sincere, and logical statement. 

     But she also had contempt. Eli Siegel is the critic who identified contempt as both the biggest enemy to art and the constant crippler of life; the source of every brutality and the weakener of mind. Emily Dickinson did not know that it was contempt which weakened her own mind, made for her deep despondency and self-dislike. She did not know the difference between being a keen critic of people and having contempt for them. We see the two mingled — along with simply a bounding and rich care for things — in the following statement to Higginson, April 25, 1862: 

You ask of my Companions Hills — Sir — and the Sundown — and a Dog — large as myself, that my Father bought me — They are better than Beings...and the noise in the Pool, at Noon — excels my Piano....My Mother does not care for thought — and Father, too busy with his Briefs — to notice what we do....They are religious — except me — and address an Eclipse, every morning — whom they call their "Father."

     In a letter of August 1862, she responds to a phrase of Higginson this way: "Of ‘shunning Men and Women’ — they talk of Hallowed things, aloud — and embarrass my Dog — He and I don’t object to them, if they’ll exist their side." So she and her dog don’t object to people as long as they keep away. And as time passed, Emily Dickinson did have to do with fewer and fewer people. She is an important American writer. But in her enjoying somewhere the finding of people hypocrites and herself superior, she is like millions of people who never wrote a line of good verse. 

     I’ll quote one more passage — from a letter (#233) to an unidentified person, a man whom she cared for: "Have you the Heart in your breast — Sir — is it set like mine — a little to the left — has it the misgiving — if it wake in the night?" This is part of a sentence and could be studied a long time for its fine style and its rhythm; but I have quoted it because Emily Dickinson is doing here what is necessary for real love and real civilization: asking with fervent sincerity, Is this person, different from me, like me too? 

     Though persons of the press have viciously resented the greatness of Aesthetic Realism — it is through the lifework of Eli Siegel that civilization, love, real keenness, and happiness will be in people’s lives at last. 
 

— Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism

Emily Dickinson represents keenness essentially. The next poem shows the keenness that finds the similarity in things which other people have seen as different. Keenness sees a distinction where things look the same, but it also sees sameness where things look different. Here Miss Dickinson says she is in trouble because she might have separated two things: 

     Sometimes in Miss Dickinson’s poems there is a keen lack of the perfect rhyme, as in rooms and names. And she could be blurry, which is unfortunate. The poem is keen, because it is about a person or persons who think two things are different because they give them different names — as truth and beauty. 

     Then, another poem has a tremendous bit of sharpness: 

     The self, while it wants to see, also doesn’t want to see. This is not just about dying. And keenness is here because the poem represents the fact that we may seem to be frantic after something and yet not want it. 

 
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The Big Mistake of Husbands
By Bennett Cooperman

A lifetime is not enough to say how grateful I am to speak as a married man about the subject of this seminar. I love the rock-solid principles of Aesthetic Realism, and I know with my happy life that they can enable husbands to be proud and kind. 

     I learned that the biggest mistake a husband makes is to dislike the world. As a result, he can 1) try to have a cozy, exclusive nest with his wife, apart from the world; 2) try to have a victory over the world, which she represents, by managing her, feeling superior to her. 3) He also can feel it is a terrific insult to be so affected by someone other than himself, and can look to find things wrong with his wife in order to feel he is justified in needing her less. These mistakes are contempt, and learning about them is liberating! 

     When I began seeing Meryl Nietsch, who is studying to teach Aesthetic Realism, I was very much affected by this thoughtful, energetic, beautiful woman. The more we talked, the more I felt I needed to be with her. Yet after we began to live together — something I had wanted very much — I found myself getting irritated. One night as I was brushing my teeth, I looked up and saw a large hair bow of hers on the bathroom shelf. I muttered under my breath, "What is this damn bow doing here?!" Meryl, who happened to hear me, was good-natured about it. She suggested that I might see this bow as standing for the world different from me but also friendly, and as a criticism of that feeling which Ellen Reiss once described: "I’m swept and it’s not by me? — the hell with this!" The next day when I opened my drawer to get a pair of socks, there was a green bow. I opened my briefcase at work and there was a purple one! Meryl’s imaginative criticism then, and since, has had a deep good effect on me, and I love her for it. 

     I have been learning, too, about a mistake men have made throughout the centuries: more than I knew, I wanted a woman — and life — to be uncomplicated and not ask much from me. For example, one night I came home from work looking forward to sitting on the couch, complacently reading a catalogue. When Meryl wanted to talk about things that had happened during the day and what she felt about them, I told her in an annoyed tone that she was interrupting me. 

     In a class, Ellen Reiss got to the source of my annoyance: "Do you feel by now you should understand Meryl Nietsch and have her behave to suit you?" I said yes, and added, "I do get puzzled if something comes up I don’t understand." Ellen Reiss asked, "Do you think it’s better to have a person puzzle you, or to have her under your thumb? Do you think you are more important managing Meryl Nietsch — or feeling you will spend your life trying to understand her?" 

     I am so happy to say now, the answer is the second. One of the great things about Aesthetic Realism is: it can have you see, as education, what you don’t like in yourself, and change. I know that in Aesthetic Realism is the explanation of themselves and marriage that men need, want, and deserve!