On that Poor Achaean, Taylor Swift

Some weeks ago I set out to write a post about rage.  It seemed like a timely idea since the American healthcare debate had reached such a level of indecency that many media outlets began replacing voter “anger” with the “r” word.  The week of August 10 seems to be the flashpoint.  Google “health care rage” and you’ll find several dozen news articles and op-ed pieces in newspapers like the Boston Herald, the Washington Post, and MSNBC using the “r” word (though not, curiously, the NYTimes).

That week also coincided with this blog’s look at the Iliad.  It’s the first work of literature ever written down in Western culture—and its first word is “Rage” (μῆνιν).  But I had just been to a wedding and wanted to write about something cheerier, so I chose “singing” instead.

This week, however, rage is once again impossible to avoid.  As if crazed rednecks misinformed low-income voters weren’t enough, now tennis champions, members of congress, and music stars are all throwing fits.  The targets of their anger are also surprisingly diverse: an Asian line judge, a black president, and a white teenage country music star.  Pace Jimmy Carter, it can’t just be race that causes such an outburst.  Why is everyone so angry?

William Blake didn’t see a problem with rage.  It was the keeping it to yourself part that he thought was dangerous.  His “A Poison Tree” makes a somewhat too-obvious statement about the importance of sharing.  He would have done well in the Oprah-age of personal confession.

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears
Night and morning with my tears,
And I sunned it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright,
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,--

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning, glad, I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

For Dylan Thomas, of course, rage was a good thing, if you knew what to rage against.  Pleading with with your dying father to fight: absolutely.  Foot foul: probably not so much.  It’s hard not to be touched by this wrenching poem, which is somewhat surprisingly cast in a formal villanelle.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Wallace Stevens is a poet I don’t like very much.  He’s too self-consciously intellectual to be any fun to read—all his poems are such work.  But this is of course a fatuous remark to make about a genius.  In “The Idea of Order at Key West,” Stevens ruminates about the workings of the mind using the metaphor of a ship at sea, siren calls, and a sailing buddy named Ramon.  The last quatrain has become famous for his remark about rage:

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,

The maker's rage to order words of the sea,

Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,

And of ourselves and of our origins,

In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Using the word “rage” with “order” is indeed brilliant.  It sounds oxymoronic—using an irrational emotion as a verb which takes “order” as its object.  But it makes perfect sense.  As humans we try desperately to make things make sense.  But we’re of course severely limited by the irrational way we think of things.  Linguist George Lakoff has been making this point for years, most accessibly in last year’s The Political Mind.  Lakoff (following Erving Goffman) suggests that our frames of reference, not our reason, govern our understanding.  When we’re confronted with things outside our frame, we “rage for order.” 

That’s not a good excuse for yelling at the president.  And least of all for picking on poor Taylor Swift.  But it is natural to get angry at things we don’t understand.  We’ve been doing it—and writing about it—for as long as we can remember.