{"id":28302,"date":"2023-01-12T11:58:43","date_gmt":"2023-01-12T16:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=28302"},"modified":"2024-08-19T14:42:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T18:42:46","slug":"macneice-on-other-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=28302","title":{"rendered":"MacNeice on other people"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Canto xvii of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journey<\/em> (1939) opens with luxurious experiences, such as watching a morning scene over breakfast and lying in a bath “under \/ Ascending scrolls of steam,” feeling “the ego merge as the pores open … And the body purrs like a cat.” He writes these passages in the first person plural, and it’s not clear whether he’s alone or with someone at the breakfast table and in the bath. In any case, these moments end; we must leave them. It is a mistake to pursue “the luxury life.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Plato was right to define the bodily pleasures \nAs the pouring water into a hungry sieve* \nBut wrong to ignore the rhythm which the intercrossing\nColoured waters permanently give. \n\nAnd Aristotle was right to posit the Alter Ego**\nBut wrong to make it only a halfway house: \nWho could expect \u2013 or want \u2013 to be spiritually self-supporting, \nEternal self-abuse?\n\nWhy not admit that other people are always \nOrganic to the self, that a monologue \nIs the death of language and that a single lion \nIs less himself, or alive, than a dog and another dog?\n\nLouis MacNeice, Autumn Journal: A Poem<\/em> (1939), Faber & Faber, Kindle Edition. <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
*referring to Plato, Gorgias 493c (Lamb trans.): “and the soul of the thoughtless he likened to a sieve, as being perforated, since it is unable to hold anything by reason of its unbelief and forgetfulness.” Socrates continues: this metaphor “is bordering pretty well on the absurd; but still it sets forth what I wish to impress upon you, if I somehow can, in order to induce you to make a change, and instead of a life of insatiate licentiousness to choose an orderly one that is set up and contented with what it happens to have got.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
**Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 1169b (Rackham trans.) “People say that the supremely happy are self-sufficing, and so have no need of friends: for they have the good things of life already, and therefore, being complete in themselves, require nothing further; whereas the function of a friend, who is a second self, is to supply things we cannot procure for ourselves.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
See also: the sublime and other people<\/a>; the sublime is social\u2013with notes on Wordsworth\u2019s Lines Above Tintern Abbey<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canto xvii of Louis MacNeice’s Autumn Journey (1939) opens with luxurious experiences, such as watching a morning scene over breakfast and lying in a bath “under \/ Ascending scrolls of steam,” feeling “the ego merge as the pores open … And the body purrs like a cat.” He writes these passages in the first person […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,27,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greek-philosophy","category-notes-on-poems","category-philosophy","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28306,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28302\/revisions\/28306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}