‘Ars Poetica’

By Robert Royal But first a note from Robert Royal: Thanks from the bottom of our hearts to all of you who donated to our mid-year fundraising campaign. From what we've received and what we can anticipate will still arrive, especially monthly donations, we're confident that TCT is good now for the rest of the year. So, let's carry on together! Now for today's column... The proverbial Martian visiting America in this 250th year (a whole quarter millennium) of our existence would be struck by many things. But probably by nothing more obvious than the large gap between what, on the one hand, we daily say and do – and on the other, what we would like to be. We're worried about how technologies like AI are coming to define us, but are mostly blind to how we've already defined ourselves – confined ourselves, really, even before the devices took over – to a materially prosperous but flat view of the world and ourselves. The Church, in recent years, has been trying to compensate with terms like Dignitas infinita and Magnifica humanitas, concepts that, in their argumentative way, do try to get at the problem. But they fall well short because what we desperately need now is not yet more arguments, but serious and artful poetry. The incomparably great Dante Alighieri already understood all this at the beginning of his Paradiso: Trasumanar significar per verba non si poria; però l'essemplo basti a cui esperïenza grazia serba. To transhumanize in words Cannot be done; but let the example suffice For those whom grace reserves the experience. (RR trans.) It's been said by some scholars that, by some inexplicable inspiration, Dante invented this idea of "transhumanism." Perhaps so. But he certainly meant something different, something Christian, by it, unlike the grotesque transmodern projections emanating from the thickets of AI in our day. And nota bene: he recognized several deep questions as well, even as he was embarking on writing a poem about the only realm in which we achieve real happiness, a state for which the term human "dignity" is a pale and distant shadow – as if we were all merely Victorian ladies and gentlemen claiming a decorous position in polite society. But we are His sons and daughters. Christianity, which is to say the truth about human existence, is much more fierce, and on a wholly different plane, than that. And to grasp that truth at all requires considerable skill, indirection – and poetry. (See Emily Dickinson's "Tell all the truth but tell it slant.") Dante Alighieri by Giotto di Bondone (attributed), c. 1333-37 [Cappella del Podestà of the Bargello Palace, Florence: source: Wikipedia] We need arguments, of course, to keep from falling into "subhumanism." And to prevent poetry from turning into sentimentality or idolatry. And also to remind us that what exceeds human reason is not, therefore, irrational, but participates in something that, beyond us, paradoxically makes us more ourselves. Because it brings us into the presence of the Truth beyond truths. This has long been understood in the Christian tradition. Modern rationalism and scientism see the transcendent as something unwarranted; within the Faith, that transrationalism is precisely what shows Christ's very power and truth. As St. Ambrose, who knew a few things about such matters, put it: Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum ("It pleased God to save his people not through dialectics [i.e., argument]"). His follower, the great St. Augustine, wrote Si comprehendis, non est Deus ("If you understand, it's not God.") And in more recent days, St. John Paul II urged that we rediscover a more ambitious reason, a reason that appreciates its limits and seeks answers that it needs, but goes beyond what human powers can achieve solely on their own. These can only come to us as revelation ("thoughts beyond their thought to those high bards were given") or, in its way, what we might call a kind of poetry. That few people read or value poetry...