Well, I don’t know about you, but I had Charlotte sightings everywhere throughout this portion of the reading {which seems to be par for the course.} I also had a an idea that I struggled with, so I’ll attempt a discussion of that as well.
Ties to Charlotte
What I think I am beginning to understand {once again, for I know I’ve had this thought before} is that Charlotte Mason
So not only does Taylor tell us that poetic knowledge has a great history, but we also realize that Charlotte Mason exists within that history. One informs the other, so to say.
We see where Charlotte gained her wisdom, even in the seemingly small things. I was reminded of her remark in one of her volumes that children needed to know things in reality before they read the symbols of the things in their reading. She gave the example of a poem or story {I don’t remember which} about a bee, and the children in a city school did not comprehend it because they had never seen a bee. And then we read Taylor, who says,
To learn to “read” by first learning to listen to the voice in the book of nature, which includes
our own human nature, was the first task of the monk, as a prerequisite for taking up later the book of Scripture, which often contains both “voices” as in Psalm 18. The clear connection is still with us here, echoing what St. Augustine said, that one cannot really read and know the words–the signs of things–without first a knowledge of the things themselves, which we must come to love.
Charlotte doesn’t use the word love as much as Taylor, but she does say the question we use to assess the job we have done with the student {as teachers} is “not how much does the child know, but how much does he care about?”
The Struggles
One of my biggest struggles was early in on the reading, when Cardinal Newman is quoted as pitting poetic knowledge against science:
Poetry, then, I conceive, whatever be its metaphysical essence, or however various may be its kinds, whether it more properly belongs to action or to suffering, nay, whether it is more at home with society or with nature, whether its spirit is seen to best advantage in Homer or in Virgil, at any rate, is always the antagonist to science. As science makes progress in any subject matter, poetry recedes from it. The two cannot stand together; they belong respectively to two modes of viewing things, which are contradictory of each other.
This seems to contradict some of what Taylor {and those he quotes} said earlier. Last week, the portion of Chapter 2 we read emphasized over and over that poetic knowledge is for the beginner–it is the proper starting point for all learning. I thought the idea was that poetic knowledge is the foundation, and all other modes of knowledge, though completely appropriate, need to be built upon that foundation to “work” well. But here we have Newman pitting poetry so much against science that I’m a little confused. I thought we were supposed to progress to science {well–where science is actually appropriate–modernity is a huge over-extension and over-application of science to realms outside of its purvey–this I completely grant}.
So tell me: is it true that science and poetry cannot co-exist? Because I look at the likes of some of the great men of history, and I am tempted to say that they can. Perhaps I am misinterpreting what Newman means by science here?
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More Tomorrow
-I don’t have a lot of time tomorrow, and I realize I’ve only just begun on the chapter, so I think I’ll write a second entry then…
-Don’t forget to read the other club entries linked at Mystie’s blog
-Buy the book and read along!
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