Poetics

Essential Media

Wes Callihan

"For Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them" (Gen. 3:21).

ome of my best friends are hardback books. They have given me many hours of enjoyment, as many when they were closed as when open. They have pleasing spines. They are worn and frayed across the top and bottom edges. Light gleams dully from their cloth skins, and in places the gold lettering is only half visible, partially erased by usage and affectionate caressing. They are tired, some of them, but upright, sober, and joyful in the execution of their duties. They take their jobs seriously.

I do own paperbacks, but they do not have my affection. They are casual, unconcerned with ceremony. They lean for support on the disciplined hardbacks near them. They laugh lightly, but my eyes do not rest on them. They do not understand that the importance of their ideas is trivialized by the t-shirts they wear. If they are so important, why do they not dress for the occasion?

And thus do my foolish paperbacks fall into an age-old error. One of its manifestations C.S. Lewis calls the doctrine of the Unchanging Human Heart, that notion that if, in the study of the literature of any other age than our own, we strip away from a man whatever separates his culture from ours, we will find what is truly significant, the essential man, as though the man's religious beliefs or culturally derived attitudes were not part of his essential being. Indeed, if we strip away everything that divides cultures, we may have something left, something common to all men in all ages, but it will be of little interest since it no longer has any context.

But this error has many manifestations. Beneath the clothing of the monarch and the serf, the two are essentially the same anatomically, and therefore there is really no essential difference between a monarch and a serf. Or so we are told. The dress is not what is significant about the man. Or so we are told. But clearly this is wrong. If we remove all the extraneous additives from milk and whiskey, they are essentially the same thing, right? Water! Well, no. Their essence is determined in fact by those things that make them different, not those things that make them the same. So it is with a man, and with the cultural accretions we mistake for mere accidental characteristics, like titles, dress, education, money, or status.

Between the covers of a paperback book and those of the same book in hardback, the book is the same and so there is really no essential difference between the two. So we think. But think again. If the content of the book is important, why put a cheap cover on it, when the message a cheap cover conveys is that the contents are not worth a better cover? The message given at first glance is that the most important thing to the publisher is saving a buck, or that the publisher thinks buyers ought to regard saving money as more important than acquiring valuable knowledge. Of course, some books are worth no more than the paper cover leads us to expect.

The error extends to language. What difference does it make, if one uses fancy words or plain words, as long as they all communicate the same message, what difference does it make? In fact, is it not better to use plain words all the time? The ancient rhetoricians knew better. The best of them said that there is an essential link between a word and the idea it expresses, that no two words mean exactly the same thing, that synonyms are only close, not exact, and that to paraphrase is to say something different. Used correctly, figures of speech, euphemisms, and other "fancy" means of expression are never window dressing, they are different messages.

And why go to all the expense of dressing up the exterior of a building when the function is the important part of it? The best architects of this century have recognized that to say "form follows function" is to miss the fact that often form is part of function and not mere ornamentation. Interior decorators have known for a long time that form can improve or radically inhibit function.

And why all the fancy hoopla for a wedding? After spending thousands of dollars and marching around in white dresses and tuxes and eating elaborate cakes that taste like any other cake, haven't we done what we could have done in front of a justice of the peace? Well no. The money, the dresses, the ceremony, the ritual all convey something that cannot be conveyed any other way, and that is the sobriety, the gravity, the solemnity of the occasion -- and the public nature of it.

Actually, most people recognize that there is a problem with assumptions like the foregoing. But remember that the answer is not simply that things must be beautiful; it is deeper. It has something to do with the fact that the body of a book, the clothing of a man, the architectural detail of a building, the words expressing an idea, the music of a hymn, and the ceremonies that embody cultural or religious ideas are all important in communicating what they enclose or embody.

It is important that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and the incarnation communicated the Word of God in a way that would be impossible otherwise. The link between the Word of God and the fleshly body which was Jesus Christ's is an essential one for communication of the Truth. When Jesus said, "I am the Truth," the "I" was not just the Idea, it included his physical body. The incarnation symbolized a universal truth: that the medium is as important as the message because the medium is always part of the message .

[Please keep in mind that Wes is a "literature person," and so any of the above that would start fistfights in more technical contexts should simply be chalked up to poetic license! -- M.Ed.]