Helen Vendler and Aesthetic Criticism

Helen Vendler advocates "aesthetic criticism," which she suggests is not primarily about determining meaning or declaring cultural value, but is rather about describing the artistic workings of a text. In other words, criticism should not just describe "what happens," but should also uncover "the music of what happens."

There's something immediately appealing about this bold argument made at a time when Theory was so insistent no such thing was truly possible, much less desirable. Vendler's is a call to get back to the text as a work of art and not just a puzzle or a political statement.

Unfortunately, this perspective is flawed. Yes, it is important to agree that literary texts are works of art; and, yes, the critic's task is largely comprised of exploring the operations of aesthetics; but the crucial and meaningful step in criticism is the contextualization of aesthetic principles in the cultural forces which give rise to aesthetics in the first place.

The biggest problem with Vendler's approach is that her social views determine her aesthetics, rather than the other way around. A good example occurs in her analysis of Adrienne Rich's two uses of the constellation Orion. Vendler approves of an earlier Rich poem ("Orion" from 1969) because it is "unsettled," but dislikes the later poem because it has "become more rash and violent" (383). And yet, looking at the poems, one sees that they both use Orion in a rather figurative way, once as a protector and once as a destroyer. I don't see that either view has any more or less aesthetic value. To decide which poem is more insightful, interesting, or powerful becomes a process of verifying its truth claims. Vendler has clearly done this (and declares for the former poem), but she does not elucidate the verification process, how the poem's art has led to the insight. In fact, she conceals her decision-making process under the guise of aesthetics. Committed writing become unartful, even if it is figurative and compelling, like the poem Vendler maligns:

Orion plunges like a drunken hunter
over the Mohawk Trail a parallelogram
slashed with two cuts of steel

A night so clear that every constellation
stands out from an undifferentiated cloud
of stars, a kind of aura

All the figures up there look violent to me
as a pogrom on Christmas Eve in some old country