Quixotics: A Manifesto
What is the meaning of “Quixotics”?
Quixotics is a literary theory and a poetic practice. It is essentially the idea that each individual in this world is incommensurately unique, (though not special), and that literary theory and poetic praxis can serve as a means of tapping into one’s own idiosyncratic creativity. This is a needed corrective in our day, owing to the preponderance of theories in criticism and poetry that continue to look to ethics as a template or blueprint for coming to terms with what a poem means. Quixotics is a robustly aesthetic and spiritual endeavor; it does not believe ethics should be used for getting at the meaning of poems. Ethics is of course important and vital in this world, Quixotics would say, but it seems that Hillel the Elder got it right in the first century and earlier when he stated the Golden Rule, and that not much since then in regards to ethics has been very interesting at all. The patron saint of Quixotics is Harold Bloom, who has been a tireless advocate for aesthetics, a ferociously original thinker in terms of literature and spirituality, and of course an emblem of what an authentically quixotic career in teaching, reading, and writing can look like.
How does one practice Quixotics?
Quixotics is informed by the theory that states that the human heart, in the guise of feeling (not emotion exactly, and not sentimentality either, and certainly not sincerity in a Wildean sense as what all bad poetry involves; something rather transpersonal and transverbal, as opposed to prepersonal and preverbal) is our actual compass in this world, and not the intellect per se (though, when one develops their feelings in more subtle ways — reading literature being a great example of this process — the intellect can or will develop as well). Quixotics therefore honors intuitions, hunches, imagination, and precognitions, and all the various experiences totally misunderstood by reason and labeled “irrational” (as opposed to transrational). Because the heart, through feeling, is our compass, one practices Quixotics first by learning to listen to one’s heart. Through this, one’s poetry and criticism can eventually proceed apace, representing one’s authentically idiosyncratic nature and voice, as opposed to repeating the tired conventions of “normal” humdrum society and life. Quixotics, as mentioned above, is concerned primarily with aesthetics and spirituality. In that sense, Quixotics argues that a spiritual practice, which allows a human being to not only “grow up” but “wake up” (Ken Wilber’s phrases) can help a human being become their actual quixotic selves. In this sense, Quixotics is also interested in resuscitating, a la Bloom, the concept and reality of genius, while also democratizing it, arguing that every sentient being in the world is a genius, and that this genius develops as one grows. (This is close to Harold Bloom’s argument that all Americans are essentially gnostics.)
Quixotics does not seek to identify certain modes or styles or forms in poetry and label those as “Quixotic.” It feels that many voices and styles and forms are quixotic (well, maybe not much current rhyming poetry!), in the sense that they represent a human being’s attempt to develop their own voice, which is a necessary and ultimately holy endeavor. Having said that, it does feel that American poetry was founded by utterly quixotic personages — Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson — and that these sages and poets should continue to guide us in our own criticism and poetic praxis. Quixotics is also not afraid of making careful and informed qualitative distinctions, i.e. saying that one poet’s work is stronger, to use a Bloomian term, than another’s. This should be obvious — the Psalms are absolutely and undeniably stronger, and have more aesthetic value, than the poetry of William Topaz McGonagall — but this wisdom, this ability to evaluate (Bloom being the main precursor here) has largely been lost in academic studies, another casualty of our dark and materialistic age.
Quixotics believes, with Ken Wilber, that there is a difference between what is more fundamental (bad poetry), and what is more significant (strong poetry), and that this is a very important differentiation. Finally, Quixotics argues that evaluation itself is ultimately a spiritual matter, involving matters of taste and meaning and feeling that are essentially matters of the transpersonal heart. In that sense, Quixotics seeks to develop a reading practice called “heart-reading,” that is less based on intellectualized abstraction or nattering and hopeless Foucault-inspired theory, but is instead a matter of and for the common reader, and represents the actual reason why actual full-bodied, full-blooded, dreaming, thinking and feeling people read novels, plays and poems in the first place. Quixotics therefore wishes to close the gap between academia and the non-academic world. As one practices heart-reading, one taps into what Bloom has called the “daemon,” which is another term for the “deity within,” essentially the root of the word “contemplation,” from templum, “a building in which a deity resides.” This deity, daemon, is one’s own aboriginal self, as well as one’s compass, and is ontologically real. Quixotics is the attempt to listen to and honor the daemon; in doing so, better literature and criticism will develop.
