Poetry will not dye

1 - Poetry Will not Die 

Simple speaking: poetry is the imitation of man through the word, the verb, the articulated language - at the very least (at most through the word and the mimetic representation, that is: body, gesture). 

It is quite possible that all arts are the imitation of man, differing from the mechanisms or resources they use. Because all arts are also self-regulating exercises through experimentation, or programmed and experimental stimulation of brain activities indispensable for survival. Therefore, because of their role in our existence, they have to simulate human activities and processes of understanding and expression to test their effectiveness. 

Someone will say: but then we are not regulated by a criterion of truth or verification. We regulate ourselves, yes. The aesthetic criterion is also a truth criterion. An ugly theory, therefore, is dismissed as an unlikely hypothesis. And verification is constantly done by experiencing our faculties by stimulating articulate perceptions. 

Let's move on to the examples. The experimentation of the basic principles of spatial and material relations (between materials) is accomplished by the construction of simulated houses in architectural offices; The exploration of the dispositional networks of images, where our perception and reaction to internal and external stimuli are programmed, is experienced by poetry (narrative and lyric), cinema, theater, painting (which also tests spatial and material relations). 

Unable to store all the images we have formed, our brain has been creating an unsurpassed alternative to this day: fixing the formulas that trigger the formation of images based on the types of stimuli received (these types will be, I suppose, included in the formulas). Unable, too, to store our thousands of reactions and gestures at every moment, including emotions and feelings, we store them by types, articulated with the types of stimuli and contexts - which are also guarded only by types whose concretization and specification. it also depends on such formulas to activate responses in defense of the organism, its welfare and its reproduction. 

How could I relate this to poetry or literature? By a fundamental way. 

Imagine someone attacks you. Immediately, in your brain, sequences of images and emotions are triggered that elicit at least immediate responses. Now think that just by imagining aggression such sequences are already taking place. A kind of blocker warns you, if it is an experience, a joke (‘make-believe’), a fiction, and that blocker will use some proper phrases in the verbal language (“Once upon a time. .. "). From there you will imagine what you would do, how you would react, measuring the situation, the context, the effects through the imagination. It will then be very close to the of the organism through poetry, verbal art. What poetry self-regulation does is this: on a stage, or on its mental stage, it introduces the figures and movements that, by verbal and sensory stimulation, will lead us to imagine aggression and response, including simulations (imaginations, evocations) of fear, as well as experimentation of possible answers by studying their possible consequences. 

As long as the play goes on, even if it is lyrical, the possible responses to aggression, and the reasons why we should prefer to react or not, are all examined, experimented, using the same resources. Each piece then explores a possible reaction (through plot, and /or metaphorical reasoning), takes it to the limit, and thus shows us the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a certain reaction. It is in this way also that poetry has a decisive social and pedagogical function, self-regulating of person and society. 

Of course this has to be done (even for reasons that I won't say at the moment - they would distract us now), all of this will be done by producing, at the same time, through the tendential and customizable verbal and imagistic proportions, producing an emotion (which can become a feeling if we become aware of it), rather, regulating the progression of the play by a specific emotion called aesthetics. It is called aesthetics because, by stimulating and manipulating the perceptive mechanisms, that is, by the play of the senses, it is exclusively insinuated and the sense of beauty with which it works regulates the progression of a reasoning, an intuition that each step can only go forward if we feel, however dimly, that all the perceptions we are combining effectively link in the desired direction. This emotion may or may not neutralize any other emotion caused by the play. It is likely to stay in tandem, in parallel, as its function is not to replace the others (as art advocates intended for art), nor to make them attractive (as advocates of compromised art supposed). Aesthetic emotion is neither a substitute for 'real' emotions, nor a decorative prop. It is the regulator who authorizes us to continue, and without being able to maintain it, it is not worth completing a work. The feeling of being aesthetically thrilled then we call beauty. 

It is not yet known why, but aesthetic emotion is so important to humans that the exposition of the most productive scientific theories usually includes it as well (note: "include it"; no theory will assert itself solely because it is aesthetic, but also by simultaneously provoking an aesthetic emotion). In the European intellectual tradition, therefore, ancient philosophers and, above all, Christians could assure us that truth and beauty were inseparable. Even more: the truth, the good and the beautiful. The data and hypotheses advanced today by neurobiology and related disciplines (evolutionary neurobiology, cognitive neurobiology) give us a more accurate view, not necessarily moralizing (nor demoralizing), which allows us to understand how much this (the link between truth and the beautiful) it is related to our natural tendency and ability to survive and extend through the generations. 

It is true that, in view of the hypotheses brought by neurobiology, especially evolutionary neurobiology, the effectiveness of the concept of truth in the struggle for survival and the effectiveness of the concept of beauty in the struggle for reproduction seem easy to explain. But there is more to it than that, and poets are the great specialists in determining the productive relations between aesthetic and logical proportions. In particular, beauty does not seem to me to be justified as a reproductive stimulant (which it will also be cumulatively), but in the case of our art at least, as regulator of the progression of discourse, of the decision that leads us to the ‘next step’ and choosing this ‘step’. The introduction of beauty in dating has similar functions, not only of attraction, but of regulating the sequence of steps to take. 

Functioning as a regulator and verifier of the organism's self-regulating, recognizing, and responding functions, art (ie, the discipline of beauty) does not die as long as humanity exists, human beings. Depreciating it would promote collective suicide. 

2 - Literary genres do not die either 

The investigations in neurobiology that I have been referring to, if they happen to interest readers, can be studied in two titles by António Damásio: Descartes' error: emotion, reason and the human brain (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2012); And the brain created man (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2011). From there, interested people will widen the reading circle in the direction they wish, as there is a lot of bibliography, and a lot of it, reliable. 

What is also highlighted in these investigations, as you will have already noticed, is the fact that memorization is performed by types, patterns, dispositional (or tendency) networks of images. The stimuli all, the images created every second, and the billions of responses executed or attempted or thought out, are not available in any storehouse of the brain, which would imply a near impossible dimension and a waste of energy. What the brain sets are the traits that allow grouping contexts, stimuli, images, organizing typological maps and structuring response frames. Once a new stimulus has been processed, or a previous stimulus is evoked, its pattern is immediately established and what is triggered is the reactive path that took place before previous and similar stimuli of the same 'gender'. 

It is no coincidence that I have now resorted to the word 'gender'. 

In line with this definition of art as imitation of man, as it is so, she tests the patterns (and also builds her own patterns) by experiencing the effectiveness of the storage system, as well as the range of the organism's various types of responses, including those of the of social interaction. The main 'public' utility of the vanguards is even to test the validity of the reproduced patterns and to experiment with their necessary replacement. 

On a stage, or in a poem, someone can, for example, strike out to elicit or evoke the type situation and response, ensuring our interest or investment in the artwork, our adherence and interaction with the play by testing through simulations, our defense and reproduction mechanisms in standard situations, often equally standard boundary situations and behaviors (not in the moral sense, but in the sense of which I have now spoken, standardized to facilitate storage and readiness in response). 

Also the artistic formulations, in the case of literature, will be grouped by types or genres, which correspond to types of situations, processes, stimuli and responses that we need to constantly check. Literature, or poetry, tests this brain-body wholeness, making it feel as in, in as danger, as on the brink of death, as in the process of reproduction, etc. 

Hence there are always literary genres. For example, the Epic usually exploits it as endangered, but when it has a vital goal to achieve, that is, all aesthetic sensations there focus on the dangerous episodes as main and link them all to a common project, a goal. general. Ulysses and his companions, Eneas and his companions, face the greatest dangers to survive and ensure their safety and the continuity of their people or group. The Novel explores the theme of love, ie, how in the process of reproduction, but when one has an obstacle to overcome. The English colloquially classify certain works as 'love story' ... Several novels written by the Portuguese Eça de Queiroz, for example, also test the effectiveness of cultural patterns in the reproduction processes of the species; clashing with cultural patterns (ie the kinds of behavior that are intended to regulate the imperative of species reproduction), shocking or barring erotic stimuli and responses from (but culturally determined) cultural or behavioral patterns, The intrigue of these narratives shows us that these patterns do not serve, they are obstacles to reproduction and therefore lethal to the species, which instinctively ignores them. 

I do not want to say that a gender is only defined by one type of situation, it can be defined by a cluster of situations that can be integrated, at the reception level, all into a certain type. This, however, is secondary, I mean it is due. Just think of a novel that has something of an epic and something of a 'love romance', which is not surprising, because in life we ​​also have rivalry over love and, in this or other ways, reproduction and danger. getting confronted or experiencing together. But there must be a key point, a fundamental connection that will trigger catharsis, the denouement, hence the end of the narrative (more or less as Aristotle said). This key point, or this golden key, defines the type of situation in which the work fits in, as it gives suggestions about survival (if the piece is of the type as endangered), or about biological continuity (if the play is of the type as in reproduction), and at this point, with the two types together, one of them represents precedence. 

Someone will say: what about the Lyric? It is the same with the lyric. In general, it leads us to enter into a process of evocation, remembrance, decision, to define responses in the middle. But the context may be the same as an epic, for example, or a novel in which the characters also remember and resolve or decide. Context and plot in lyric poetry are merely suggested because the genre specializes in the decision process, making a poetic recap to test and consolidate standardized decisions. She (lyric poetry) therefore tests the arguments that will be decisive, that is, she operates by trying to approve or neutralize the stimulation of dispositional representations tending to reactivate the decisive criteria in a moment of danger or pleasure. And it does so by provoking in us corresponding emotions, in sequence regulated by an aesthetic progression. 

There was a poem by Brazilian Francisco Otaviano, an ultra-romantic author now unknown, who was very popular at the time and said

Who passed through life in white cloud, 

And in placid rest he fell asleep; 

Who has not felt the cold of doom, 

Who passed through life and did not suffer; 

It was a specter of man, not a man, 

Just went through life, didn't live.

The poetic digression evokes, by fragments, two types of situation that define two types of biography and ends up giving us a reason to decide on one of these types (the other is a falsification of life). 

What strikes me as intriguing is that lyrical stimulation and imitation is so and so attentive to human psychology that it does not seem to need a full sequence of stimuli (in this case metaphors or metonymies and synecdochees), suggests us situations- like listing analog fragments. Too often, in 'real' life, the shock of certain stimuli and concepts triggers in the brain various possibilities of standard images, standard situations, standard responses, associated with rapid, untested connotations seen in consciousness by others. analog fragments. The brain then goes on processing possibilities and stimuli to find the right response. When you find it, the poem ends. It ends precisely with the sentence relating to this meeting, or leaving in the air the suggestion of that sentence. 

This means that, as much as poetry (art in general), literary genres do not die either, they change, like the arts, but grouping by genres, either at the outset (emission of the text) or upon arrival (text reception) will not disappear, because we need to standardize perceptions and reactions (and their consequences) to memorize them. The books will continue to give general readings right on the cover or front pages, telling us more or less explicitly that this is a 'novel', 'poems', short stories, etc., and that we will be as in danger, or as in reproduction, or as in the process of decision making and the consequent formation of feelings. Publishers and booksellers, who are very objective because they need to quickly reach their type of audience, soon promote genological indications, aimed at those who already know what kind of work they want. Thus, the covers and beginnings of the books activate, before reading, a whole reading program, a whole horizon of expectations that makes it quicker and more appropriate to understand what is written, that is, the kind of mental process that reader will examine reading that work. 

In this sense, what is the position of the critic? From specialized reading? Best said: what is your task? Undoubtedly, to test the suitability of the pieces to the respective aesthetic and human suggestion. That is: to verify if the composition fulfills what it proposes, if it produces or impugns a response regulator and if it does it without breaking the aesthetic emotion, that is, if it does it with beauty at all times - beauty, surroundings To repeat, it is fundamental that the specialty of artistic experimentation is regulated and constituted by the criterion of beauty. The critic then seeks to understand (and explain) the extent to which the work fulfills the promise made before reading, the extent to which it adds, maintains or diminishes the expectation, the compensation, the prize for finding the right answers. To what extent can it hold us, keep an eye out for the various possibilities, be interested in the responses and interactions it causes. 

To answer this, we resort to a true arsenal of 'style figures', or more simply a memory of resources, procedures, tricks that assure us of the intended effects. There is no need, as in stifled rhetoric, to automatically memorize all picture names and their main features. What is needed is to understand and store the types of effects to be achieved and the structural types of tricks that are in place to guarantee the effect. For example: suspension effects, reiteration effects, surprise effects - and their procedures. What we need is to see if language is used and composed in such a way that these effects appear at the decisive moments of the work, with exact psychic functions and ensuring aesthetic emotion. If they do, the work fulfills its promise to test, through beauty, mechanisms of apprehension and decision that are fundamental to survival and reproduction. 

Therefore, we also imagine ourselves as writers in those situations that we intend to suggest and lead the reader to evoke, experiment, reproduce mentally. We first rehearse ourselves, and even after we write, we test - by reading - the effects we want. Therefore, Hegel advised poets to have much experience of life and the world. Because they needed to have experienced a variety of situations, stimuli and responses in order to be able to evoke them in others. And they needed to know well the psychological diversity of human beings so that, with phrases that will be read by everyone, they would ensure the same kind of responses, the activation of the same dispositional mechanisms, the same neurological circuits that make us mentally the image networks. situation pictures and reaction strategies that we process and map. 

Therefore, the meaning that makes a biographical study (in cases where the work does not appeal to such a study), is the knowledge of the limits that are experienced. No author will be effective speaking in situations they are unaware of. You can talk about situations that you did not live, but knew and perceived, imagined, saw, read about, put yourself in the place of the person who lived them. But you won't be able to talk about those situations you never knew about, not even by your imagination. To this extent biography limits him and therefore conditions his work. 

3 - Still the neurobiology and the genres 

Much more lessons, deductions and, above all, experimental reading programs are to be deduced from the confrontation between the usual problems in literary studies of the last three thousand years (at least), which have evolved little in essence (I mean, as regards possible configurations), and the new data brought by neurobiology and related disciplines. Alongside computerized experimentation and the acceleration of interactions in a cyber, or computerized environment, this will decisively change our awareness of literature or poetry in all its textual, paratextual, cotextual, and contextual aspects. 

In this note, which aims to draw attention to a fruitful line of research, I will focus on the issue of literary genres and their relation to brain functioning when it needs to elaborate responses to the stimuli received. 

The raison d'être of literary genres is deeper, if I may express it, than I have hitherto proposed. It is because the very images that we are forming from the stimuli, they are not only organized by dispositional representations, but also their constitution (or reconstitution) goes through a narrative syntax. This articulation of images tells us the story of the constitution of the image, of the context, of previous experiences and in order to lead us to a decision. As Antonio Damásio says, in And the brain created man, 

[...] the brain tends to organize this (imaginary) abundance of material in much the same way as the work of an image editor: giving it some sort of coherent narrative structure in which certain actions are supposed to have certain effects.­­

This means that the narrative feature of one of the two major literary genres is one of the defining features of the very organization of images in the brain. Thus we see that literature is, more deeply than we thought, the imitation of man. In particular, it mimics the very formation and organization of images, reproduces this mechanism to lead readers to exercise it as well. 

He will ask who reads me once again: what about the Lyric? The lyric is about the access of images to the stream of consciousness. The imitation of man in this genre is done by imitating the basic procedure used to resolve a spatial and organizational boundary. Of all the processes that simultaneously occur in our brain, many are not carried out consciously, but by a kind of automatism. What looms in consciousness is the one that demands the most attention - which may eventually be articulated with the old theory of tonus, all revised, of course, and updated. It is, for example, the most dangerous subject, which, therefore, frightens us, makes us feel fear, anger, and other emotions, which comes to mind. 

Our conscience, by the way, could not pay attention to everything that goes on in the brain and body. Using Damásio's "computer" metaphor, we will say that the "screens" on which we can open narrative (and logical) sequences of images are in limited number. So there are 'automatic' responses (automated by standardization) - and that word is often replaced by 'unconscious',' instinctive ',' impulsive ', etc. On the other hand, there are limits to opening (in awareness)' screens. and to include images in them, these images must be fundamental and have the potential to represent situation and decision types and criteria. I mean that the images brought to consciousness (by involvement in decisive processes important for survival) have to be as broadly functional analogies, proverbs, and riddles. They have to be, as in lyric poetry, fragments that allow one to operate and decide upon various realities or plots or contexts. We need images (already interconnected, ie complex images) whose articulations go beyond the systematic and detailed consideration of each of its components. As with the lyric, we will use and focus on short audiovisual and conceptual compositions, using 'tricks' that help us save space, time, energy, without compromising decisions and helping to quickly mark important information - which it is done through emotions, whose evocation and invocation comes particularly from lyric poetry. 

And, as always, the criterion of beauty regulates the whole process, and because beauty is also synthetic, it presupposes a structure capable of bringing together various emotions, feelings, implications and deductions into a seemingly concentrated, incisive simple image. The aesthetic or artistic criterion will be present in the selection of images (it is my opinion, not said by Damásio). At this point, it is convenient to emphasize this passage of And the brain created man, in which it is hypothesized that emotions are markers that allow the brain to choose the images that come into consciousness. Hence, also, the strength and importance of emotions, ignored by the positivists, who associated emotion with art and reason with science, in a schematic, reducing duplicity, without explanatory power to understand scientific intuition itself, for example. 

In doing so, however, positivists and scientists of the nineteenth century (and early twentieth century) paradoxically followed them in the wake of common sense. Why does common sense think that emotion belongs to art and reason to science? By the expository method: art imposes itself arousing emotions and, among the various emotions, choosing as a decisive criterion, which allows to pass to the next moment or to the next part of the composition, the aesthetic criterion, the emotion of beauty. Therefore, to be art, it needs to thrill and it needs to provoke the aesthetic emotion, the emotion of beauty by the evocation of perceptive types. If the recipient of art is not moved and if, among the emotions he experiences, does not pass through the feeling or emotion of beauty, he rejects the play, he is disinterested. Better said: Emotions will have to be aesthetic or aestheticized and will have to be strong. 

Science, for its part, sets out a sequence of arguments that appeals to rational judgment and it seems that emotion, especially aesthetics, is out of it. But not. Also scientific discourse has a rhythm (of exposition and constitution), has a beauty grounded in clarity, conciseness, the final magical effect of a conclusion that seems, at the end (repeat), obvious but that no one had yet realized and it concentrates an explanatory power that makes it very productive, that is, it also functions as a seemingly simple and really complex and concentrated image. When this is not done, common sense admits that so-and-so can be a great scientist, but finds it a pity that he cannot write, that is, he lacks an aesthetic criterion of exposure. In this kind of ugly scientific discourse, without beauty criteria (mere hasty report of some experience, or some developed reasoning) - a type today unfortunately very common due to lack of humanistic preparation - the authors face great difficulties to read and recognized and, above all, for someone to remember what they wrote. The effectiveness with the target audience is low. Because speech lacks the quintessential marker of what the brain considers important enough to access consciousness. According to Antonio Damásio, this marker is the emotion. 

Lyric poetry imitates Man in this way, imitating the process of image selection by its power of articulation and marking them by the emotion they provoke. Therefore it is, par excellence, a literary standard, or genre, dedicated to exercising the how in the decision-making process to self-regulate. 

Rio Grande, February 2019