Shikdar Mohammed Kibriah,
Bangladesh
Nature and Scope of Poetry
In nature what is poetry? Poetry is not metaphysics, mathematics or science, history, or any subject in which some rules and regulations literally can be applied. Poetry may not be grammar or metaphysics, but it is not such a thing that has no identity, character, or philosophy. It must have a philosophy as such every meaningful object holds a philosophy, identity, and outlook in itself. It may be explicit or obscure, or at least symbolic. Poetry is not different from that. It has a nature and scope too.
In nature analytically how can poetry be defined? It’s not easy to answer simply as such it’s not easy to define philosophy. In defining philosophy there are a lot of outlooks and theories and so, no axiomatic definition can still be established. In that way, poetry has a lot of contradictions in its definition. Even though poetry and philosophy are not the same subjects, they have many similarities in nature. Both are involved in realizing the absolute truth, beauty, and creativity. But in the realization of the absolute as like philosophers have different views, ideas and outlooks, poets have different ways and outlooks too.
Despite remaining many different views both idealist and realist or materialist philosophers do not ignore their opposition. They only put their different views on realizing the way, method, and conclusion. Because there are some such rules in philosophy that are self-evident. In the same way, poetry has some rules, techniques, and formative identities through which it shows its distinction. It is true that these are not literally unbreakable like logic or grammar, yet there is no scope of defining poetry as art out of order and it should not be claimed as freedom of a poet as freedom means no autocracy.
Poetry collects its essential formative elements from natural objects. These are perceivable. These sensitivities are experienced intellectually and enriched with abstract beauty. They create an outstanding feeling of intuition that is aesthetic and it is truly the heartbeat of poetry. In a true sense, the source of this feeling is the appearance of reality. Though it is sensationally experiencing, it assimilates the absolute feeling of spiritual experience. It is temporal but it crosses the time and holds an eternity that is, in fact, an understandable world of ideality. It is both traditional and modern. Again, modern and postmodern in the sense and sensitivity, thinking, and creativity. Its tendency is frequently postmodern. It is a constant truth about poetry. So, there is no scope for depicting it as a postmodernist project of Foucault-Derrida. It is, in fact, poetic nature and its natural way of advanced and progressive evolution.
A full agreement between poetry and recent postmodernism may not be possible but postmodern trends have some aspects related to the great human values along with the insightful truth of the poetry. Modernism ignored them and created a great crisis for civilization. But poetry can never ignore them for its nature. It is as positive as great modern values like individuality, free-thinking, freedom of speech, democracy and liberality, etc. In reality, extremism is a curse for any civilization and synthesis is the fruitful pragmatic way of serial evolution for human civilization. Obviously characteristic trends of contemporary civilization should be criticized, evaluated and cultured. Negative trends should be marked and separated and positive trends should be preserved. It is a must for reforming a civilization as well as poetic thought too.
Poetry is an art. Nature of art is an aesthetic feeling which is mainly complacent originating from joyous or touchy experiences. Ignoring others is not achieved. True complacency is often combined with all, not involved in causing others unhappiness, distress, or dissatisfaction. Thus aesthetic feeling is inevitably related to goodwill. But modernism tried to establish a materialistic civilization and indiscriminately ignored metaphysical and religious values in the name of scientific truth. But these values are the real safeguard of law and order, peace and prosperity, and human solidarity. Consequently, God, goodwill, and spirituality along with tradition, heritage, etc. have started to be rejected by the modernists and their motivated followers all over the world. Hedonists and capitalists have dominated the civilized and cultural world. As a result, world order is now at stake. Human rights are severely ruined. No true activities for peace, solidarity, equality, stability, and human prosperity are seen here.
True poetic sense should not be blocked. It is not autistic but rather a free thoughtful, well-wisher, and a human aesthetic. For a poetical need a poet flies in the sky by sputnik or borak, rides a boat of Noh. or rafts with Behula like Lakhindar. He explores scientific truth in a holy book, searches the door window of paradise on his laptop, and whatnot. This is the latitude of poetic sensitivity. A poet holds the entire universe in his poetic thought from the earth to the greater space as his poetical objects.
Human appeal, commitment, and optimism may exist in poetry. There should be no scope for ignoring them. Because poets are also born on this earth. They are not different from that angel or devil. Individually every poet is a citizen of a society or a state and above all, a citizen of the world. So, he is almost a statutory being and an ethical entity too. He has no scope of ignoring humanistic goodwill even if he should have more spacious freedom as a creative entity than common citizens enjoy. His rightful space should be up to the expectation he truly needs for his creativity to keep flowing without any interruption and he may not be an autocratic too that causes social unrest and breaks the law of order, nature and customs proved positive for human civilization.
Modernists say that while art is objective, it is restricted by its object and then there remains actually no art. Because art is a self-satiation of enjoying the beauty. But what is beauty? Beauty is a feeling of pleasure. It’s touchy to our sensitivities. But how? There is no scope for mentioning it as a specific process. Because it is, in fact, so many kinds—natural and supernatural and then quite impossible to be enlisted. They may be physical, psychological, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, ethical, social, and so on. If they grow a feeling of beauty, they naturally will be a part of art. Then they do not exist as objectivity, they truly act as a part of subjectivity. Here subjectivity along with objectivity makes a creative harmony of feeling beauty. If this harmonious process is perfectly done, it holds an absolute truth of the universe and thus makes art universal. It is firstly empirical, then intellectual, and lastly intuitional. It is the center of aesthetic beauty for both artists and art-seekers. When an art-seeker can reach here in the way of feeling, he is satisfied with an immense joy of beauty. We can conclude here that objectivity is not a barrier to artistic creativity rather it supplies the sensitivities needed for it. That is why humanistic appeal or commitment is inevitably related to the nature of the arts. If there is no truth, beauty, or goodwill in its nature, it will be then nothing but a bottomless basket. So, an artist has no scope of being irresponsible for humanity, civility, morality, beauty, prosperity, and so on. Poetry is an art—in fact, a high-class art. Therefore, a poet cannot ignore it. But it mainly depends on how successfully he applies it through his wordy project.
In poetry, there exists a combination of poetic experience, realization, emotion, and conclusion through an aesthetic flow and it is the natural truth of featuring a poetic art. In this feature, the poet evolves his self-realization, outlook, and belief. He reveals his experiences and feelings in an aesthetic intimacy through a perfect wordy project. But his belief or outlook is not a standard or consideration for evaluating his poetic ability. Standard is how poetic artistically he has worded his feelings and reactions in his poetry.
