in time of daffodils( who know
e. e. cummings
Read the poem HERE. If it has disappeared, let me know. For some reason, posts of cummings's poems have a short half-life on the Web.
(This is a draft; things might get better.)
First impressions of the poem
It all looks quite puzzling. Who is speaking these words, and to whom? What is the apparent relationship between the speaker and the one spoken to? Can you come up with an interpretation of the poem, in which you put the main thoughts of the poem into your own words? In other words, what do you think the speaker is saying, or better—because we cannot really know the poet's mind—what do the speaker’s words mean to you? Finally, look at the structure of the poem on the page. What does each stanza (in this poem, a group of three lines) accomplish? What is the effect on you, the reader, of division of the words into short lines, division of lines into stanzas, lack of capital letters, strange spacing, and missing or unusual punctuation? Why do you think the writer arranged the words in this way, instead of in grammatical sentences that are as unambiguous as possible? Perhaps now you want to read it again, and come back here after you have thought about your answers to these questions.
In entering the web site One Culture, you have wandered into a collection of writings about science and literature—in particular, about the science of life at the molecular level, and its relationships to the humanities. This essay illustrates one way I might go about this, so let me give you my take on the connections between science and this poem.
First, how do I interpret this poem? In one interpretation that seems to fit, this is a love poem that emphasizes pursuit, not capture; how, not why; seeking, not finding; actuals, not appearances; deliberation, not decision. The narrator says to her or his lover, consider me, the spirit, not me, the body; me, the sought, not me, the found; the actual, not the apparent; the inner, not the outer.*
Why would I suggest this particular poem to you, as a means to shed light on connections between science and literature? Why might I, in my past life as a teacher, have asked students to read it just at the moment they were entering a course in biochemistry? In short, the oppositions in this poem remind me of the best elements of science. The most exciting science focuses not on what we know, but on how we know it; not on undeniable facts, but on the pursuit of knowledge. In the best science, we seek the spirit of nature, not the body; the essence of nature, not the appearance; and especially in the molecular sciences, we seek inner, not outer, nature. We ask, “What, at the unimaginably small scale of atoms and molecules, gives us the visible, living world?”
The oppositions in cummings’s poem are as pertinent to science as to love. And after all, isn’t science a form of loving nature? The scientists who impress me most are those who seem to love nature, and to adore their chosen area of research. They exhibit that love by being less excited about what they discover than about the process of discovery, and by being less impressed with their own analytical and technical abilities than with the beauty and intricacy of the nature they seek to understand.
One Culture
Trite perhaps, but true, artists and scientists are trying to understand the same world. That world, although apparently made up entirely of inanimate particles and forces, somehow produces life, consciousness, art, science, and love.
Scientists explore the material world, the purely physical world of objects and processes that any person can observe directly or experience indirectly by measurement with scientific tools. The product of scientific exploration is reliable knowledge—knowledge to give us understanding of the physical world, and guide our attempts to manage it, rather than be completely at its mercy.
Is the physical world all there is?
How is the physical world, that complex amalgam of objects external to the thinker (sometimes called third-person entities), related to human consciousness, and to feelings like pain, happiness, disappointment, and hope (first-person experiences)? How is it connected to human values like charity, love, tolerance, and honesty? How does a world composed of mindless atoms and molecules produce poetry, painting, and song?
One Culture is a collection of comments on works or fragments from the humanities, each work connected in some way to matters commonly studied in science courses. The collection began as a list of optional readings in my biochemistry course for advanced college students. I discovered many of the works while teaching interdisciplinary courses with colleagues in other departments, courses with such titles as “Metaphor and Myth in Science and Literature” and “Life and Literature After Darwin.”
One Culture is different from my other published works and projects, but looking back, I can see many parts of the transition to these kinds of concerns, including the interdisciplinary teaching that attracted me throughout my teaching life.
Discovering connections—an example
Starting in 1993, I wrote three editions of a small, technical book entitled Crystallography Made Crystal Clear. After I published the second edition, I ran across the poem 'Phase' by A. R. Ammons (to read the poem, click HERE, then scroll down to page xxvi). In the third edition of Crystallography Made Crystal Clear, readers find this poem facing page 1, Chapter 1, on a page that had been blank through the first two editions. A reviewer of the manuscript of the third edition suggested strongly (and, I am sure he believed, helpfully) that I begin Chapter 1 by explaining what the poem has to do with the book.
I did not consider his suggestion for even a moment, for the obvious and primary reason that I wanted readers to enter the book wondering about just that. I wanted them to start out with little question marks above their heads, and with antennas tuned in for explanations, allusions, or echoes. Another reason was that I did not want to constrain my readers’ creativity in finding their own links between two seemingly disparate works, a brief poem and a technical treatise. But there was one more crucial reason. Although my decision to lay the poem at the front door of my book, like a welcome mat, was immediate upon my first reading it, and although the poem still tells me in several ways that it belongs right there, I was not sure how well I could articulate the connections at the time. And I did not want to try fleshing them out until I had allowed some kind of internal ferment to work longer on the matter, a process that seems to go at its own pace. (I did make one small concession to my crystallography readers. In the index, in sub-entries under phase is this one: "Phase", allusions to the poem. I wonder if anyone has ever noticed it.)
Years went by before I had more to say about 'Phase'.
For me, the initial decision that it will be interesting to juxtapose a poem or other literary work with a specific scientific topic is purely intuitive, perhaps like a scientist’s first inkling of an entirely new way of looking at a problem, or the writer’s recognition of how changing just a word or two, or the order of words, somehow makes a phrase more vivid and powerful, or changes its meaning, or makes it fascinatingly ambiguous. Sometimes when I try to articulate the connections, they seem to vaporize. But usually, I like the juxtaposition anyway, and I sense that connections are there, and will emerge in time, in others if not in me. In my writings at One Culture, I make many such juxtapositions. My exploration of the connections is incomplete and continuing, and there is great variation in the extent to which I have been able to find and articulate links. But at some point, I want to share something. One Culture is a snapshot of a sporadic search, my personal urge to see things whole, not fragmented into academic divisions, and to help others—anyone who shares this urge—to start finding, or creating, connections between science and other realms of thought.
For me, these connections do not have the rigor of scientific evidence that a particular theory is sound, or that a drug is safe and effective. One essay does not lead logically to another. This project is more like an artist’s collage, and less like a philosopher’s extended argument. Perhaps I should have just copped out completely and called it post-modern, but it is not just anything-goes. Putting it together has been less like organizing, and and more like composing, in the way one composes a picture.
I made no attempts at inclusiveness or political correctness in choosing the literary works—they are here because I found connections in them to science, and in particular, to life or physical science. So my choices reflect, from among a much wider range of favorite writers, those that are best for the task of this project. Some authors appear repeatedly, simply because they wrote prolifically on themes that fit my goals.
Enjoy finding out how science and the humanities compose One Culture.
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* A few students have argued with my interpretation, and told me that this poem is urging the reader to see the poet beneath the poem, a sort of "remember me" or "I was here" from the poet, yearning to be noticed and remembered. That interpretation also fits the words on the page, but it is less interesting to me personally, and a much less interesting interpretation for linking to science. I slowly realized that most of those who nodded assent to this interpretation write poetry themselves. Perhaps now we know what they are up to. But I prefer to think that good poets have more on their minds than simply, "Hey, look at me!"
