1/10/07 - English Literature - Enlightenment and the Quotidian

The quotidian was important to the Enlightenment because it became the standard of the 'real'. But it underwent a transformation. It was the everyday, but it also meant authentic or essential. The Enlightenment defined what was 'natural' by using the quotidian, which Hume defined as the 'commonplace.' He also said that things are the way they are because they are the way they are. But this explanation is paradoxical and makes the ordinary hard to conceive. For Wordsworth, things are the way they are because they in essence that way. Carlyle called this "natural supernaturalism". Wordsworth was criticised for choosing trivial subject matter in his poems, but the point is that he did not see the subjects of his poems in the same way.

The concept of the quotidian figures in two ways in relation to the Enlightenment. Consider that the supernatural is always the priority over the natural. The Enlightenment was all about looking inwards, to the human mind and what it means to be human. So the category of subject overtook the category of the soul, or rather, naturalism became the focus over supernaturalism (science and philosophy rose; religion and superstition declined).

"Divinity indeed is a true Efflux from the Eternal light, which, like the Sun-beams, does not only enlighten, but heat and enliven […]. And as the Eye cannot behold the Sun […] unless it be Sunlike […] so neither can the Soul of man behold God […] unless it be Godlike, hath God formed in it, and be made partaker of the Divine Nature."
[John Smith, ‘The True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge’ (1660)]

"[I]t may be safely affirmed, that almost all of the sciences are comprehended in the science of human nature, and are dependent upon it. The sole end of logic is to explain the principles and operations of our reasoning faculty, and the nature of our ideas; morals and criticism regard our tastes and sentiments; and politics consider men as united in society, and dependent on each other."
[David Hume, ‘Abstract of a Book Lately Published: Entitled A Treatise of Human Nature’ (1740)]

There is a shift here from Smith's divine nature to Hume's human nature. Hume found that investigating consciousness seemed to change the consciousness. His concept of himself became abstracted. The attempt to understand himself only led to him distancing from himself. This is the paradox: in the quest for the ordinary, Hume only pushed it away. The self was indeterminate. He became suspicious of philosophy thereafter.

"For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude, in which I am plac’d in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell’d all human commerce, and left utterly abandon’d and disconsolate. […] When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance."
[David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1740)]

Humans are divided against themselves; we cannot help alienating ourselves upon reflection of ourselves. Hume accepts the divide and takes back the quotidian.

"Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delerium, […]. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hour’s amusement, I wou’d return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain’d, and ridiculous, that I cannot find it in my heart to enter into them any farther."
[David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1740)]

Hume is escaping reflection by immersing himself in the ordinary. He admits defeat. But he believes that a good writer should be able to deal with these problems.

"If his [the writer’s] language be not elegant, his observations uncommon, his sense strong and masculine, he will in vain boast his nature and simplicity. He may be correct; but he never will be agreeable."
[Hume, ‘Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing’ (1742)]

Philosophers, although they try to find the truth, find that it is not enough. Being right is not enough; you must be agreeable, you must not let things worry you. Hume developed an accomplished style to make himself more agreeable, to reconcile thought and nature. However, no one liked it because it evaded the point.

Hume's style assumes enthusiasm is dangerous. It coincided with an explosion of books on the market: rule books. These described and listed and explained what was correct. It assumed that Britain was a polite society, that there was a 'middle way'.

In Protestantism the individual was inscribed in the mind.

"To My Fellow-Citizens of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICAI put the following work under your protection. […] As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself."
[Thomas Paine, Age of Reason (1795)]

Paine uses the Protestant idea of honesty of mind and sincerity, but ironically his argument is against organised religion. He believed that science and religion could be reconciled.

Empiricism considers people as isolated consciousnesses, separate from class or career. Capitalism sees people as things, rather than dynamically connected to a social and historical background.

Romanticism transformed the quotidian in two ways. Firstly, the quotidian became radicalised and secondly, contested (both feature in Wordsworth). Hume overcame the idea of the quotidian with his style. By the end of the eighteenth century this normative preserve of the ordinary, Hume's concept that only educated gentlemen could understand the ordinary, was contested. Farmers and workers developed the notion of 'common sense'. For Hume, common sense meant accomplishment. For Paine, it was the collective thought processes of everyday life.

"Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, ‘tis right."
[Paine, Common Sense (1776)]

So according to Paine common sense is available to everyone. The quotidian became radicalised as the property of everyone by the end of the eighteenth century. Common sense was universalised and available to everyone. Wordsworth spoke of it in his preface to Lyrical Ballads.

"The principal object, then, which I proposed to myself in these Poems was to chuse incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them […] in a selection of language really used by men […]. Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language […] because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.

[W]hatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest Poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt but that the language which it will suggest to him, must, in liveliness and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the Poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in himself."
[William Wordsworth, Preface, Lyrical Ballads (1802)]

Like Hume, Wordsworth attempts to think about what kind of writing is 'natural'. He associates the 'real' with the 'everyday', with the quotidian. The ordinary is not simply the voice of the quotidian but an authentic voice of humanity. Developing a style is antithetical to nature, so it is a self-defeating manifesto - only the quotidian language has authority. Real poetry is the everyday language of working folk, not the fragments that Wordsworth himself writes. For Wordsworth, the quotidian is the basis of thought, not the development of it. The basis of thought is more authentic and essential.

"There is a blessing in the air
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees and mountains bare
And grass in the green field."
[Wordsworth, ‘Lines Written at a Small Distance from My House’ 5-8]

He employs simplicity and the language of authentic rural people, people considered close to nature and he therefore emulates the naturalness of humans.

"Nay more: if I may trust myself, this hour
Hath brought a gift that consecrates my joy,
For I, methought, while the sweet breath of heaven
Was blowing on my body, felt within
A correspondent mild creative breeze,
A vital breeze which travelled gently on
O’er things which it had made, and is become
A tempest, a redundant energy
Vexing its own creation."
[Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1806, I. 39-47]

This poem is more consciously abstract. It is less trusting of metrical forms and uses in fact the plainest form. Wordsworth's sense of the ordinary shifts from ordinary in a social sense to ordinary in a psychological sense.

Elements of Wordsworth's writing contest radicalism. He intensifies the distinction between literature and science. He takes power over his style; uses the quotidian to authenticate. For him, the ordinary is the basis of life. Naturalness is not defined by the ordinary, but by the power of consciousness and memory. "Natural supernatural" - the quotidian is a combination of both. At first it was the people who decided what was normal, but then this decision was given to the poets.

In conclusion then, the quotidian invention of late modernity created a divide about the concept of the ordinary - in one way, the quotidian is celebrated, and in another it is depicted as authentic, real and natural.