A Show of Hands, Please: How Many of You Have Read Matthew Arnold?

I’d been wanting to read some poetry and prose of Matthew Arnold for a long, long time. He comes up so often in my reading about literary criticism, nineteenth-century literature, and nineteenth-century political history, it seems that every scholar interested in the topics that interest me has read his works, so it seemed absolutely imperative for a person with my reading program to include Matthew Arnold.

But when? There’s so much to read! Here’s the real beauty of the Ten-Year Plan: just put him somewhere and then stick to the schedule. It doesn’t matter if he’s slated to come up in year 1 or in year 7: he’s on the list, so instead of having to think, “When am I ever going to get around to reading Arnold?” I can think, “Arnold’s on my list. I’ll get to him as long as I live that long.” And live that long I have.

I enjoyed everything I read. Sometimes I found it beautiful and instructive and inspiring. At other times it made me think through the reasons I disagree with him. And at other times it just made me glad that I’ve finally read for myself the material that gets referenced so I’ll understand everything else I read. I have a lot of thoughts and only one brief post, so I’m going to resort now to disconnected bullet points.

• Part of Arnold’s view intersects with Stoicism. I struggled just last month with trying to say briefly what tenet of Stoic philosophy appealed to me. Arnold did it in just one perfect quatrain:

And why is it, that still
Man with his lot thus fights? —
‘Tis that he makes this will
The measure of his rights.

• Arnold’s poetic language is beautiful and easy to read. Someone whose observations I quickly passed over (a critic writing for an online encyclopedia? the author of the preface to one of the two collections I read from?) pointed out that the poetry has this fluidity because Arnold's poetic language doesn't include a lot of obscure vocabulary and because he mixes a mostly noninverted syntax with a pleasant ebb and flow in the rhythms. Yes! That!

• The early poems mostly express heartache over a certain Marguerite's refusal to requite his love. Alas! The world doesn't get a lot more fulfilling for Arnold in the coming years, either. In later poems, he has given up on Christian faith, although the rituals and morals of the Church, it seems, remain beautiful and inspiring to him. He wants to lead a moral life, but mostly he wants morality as part of a life fully felt, fully lived. This secular view of life can be – and Arnold's is – inspiring, at least for a while, until he starts scolding other people for not living their lives to the fullest. He doesn't pity the fellow going through his routine at the shop, factory, or farm as much as he gets inspiration by negative example. It’s as if Arnold thinks, Well, at least I’m not like that guy! But even worse, it seems that Arnold’s most fully lived life requires that others around him also live fully, so that their meager lives are really just hindering his, Arnold’s, own best life. That view of his thoughts may be unfair, but it's the way it comes across to me in this first real acquaintance.

• Culture and Anarchy begins by defining culture as a pursuit of perfection in "sweetness and light," i.e. beauty and intellect. And the pursuit isn’t just for one’s self: culture is a moral movement of lifting and perfecting society. Here he sounds less condescending as he desires the masses to be educated in everything that is best in the world. But isn't there an undercurrent of contempt here? Doesn’t he assume that the life of a laborer who raises his children well isn't fulfilling, noble, and beneficial to the world? Could Arnold have learned nothing from a carpenter? Or does “culture” only involve the carpenter learning Homer? But at least he believes that the State should educate the carpenter and his children.

• According to Arnold, the British (and the Americans, I would add) praise liberty almost unconditionally. But, he says, people shouldn’t really be able to do whatever they want: that way lies anarchy! People should not adjust their actions to meet their desires; they should adjust their desires to comport with “reason and the will of God.” That means that they should all learn what’s right. (Oh, dear! There’s Plato’s old problem: believing that people will do the right thing if only someone educates them on right behavior.) And who’s to teach everyone in a society? Not a sect that emphasizes their distinction from everyone else. Not just one political party or one class. Clearly, this education must come from the State, and clearly the State should be led by people who have risen above divisions and who now live by their “better selves,” which always see the common humanity in everyone. Oh! Is that all it takes? I wonder why humanity hasn’t made that happen before!

• I have for decades read over and over that Matthew Arnold defined culture – this thing that, having been taught to everyone, will produce a whole society of people who follow their better selves and act for the good of the common humanity in everyone – as “the best that has been thought and said in the world.” Go ahead! Do an internet search of “matthew arnold the best that has.” How many times do you see the phrase as I have worded it? And isn’t it always in quotation marks that promise the reader that the words are Arnold’s own? Yet, I’m here today to tell you that Matthew Arnold never said that phrase! (At least it doesn’t occur in any of the works included in the two readers that I bought and used.) He says, at various times, “the best that is known and thought” (in “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”) and “the best that has been thought and known” (in Culture and Anarchy). “Culture is the best that has been thought and said in the world” is a phrase that certainly doesn’t point to the writings of Matthew Arnold himself, because Arnold never “said” it! So maybe all those critics and historians that I had believed to have read Arnold haven’t really read him! Maybe they all just pass along one incorrectly worded quotation hoping that, as with a certain fabulous emperor, only the unworthy will fail to see their marvelous clothes. Maybe I am the only one who now understands that these emperors are naked. (The most outrageous are the ones who pretend to quote the line with “which” instead of “that,” as if using “which” without distinguishing between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses makes one more intellectual!) Maybe I am in fact the greatest living expert on Matthew Arnold because I am the only one who has actually read large swaths of his poetry and Culture and Anarchy!

• As Yoda would say: No, there is another. Forgotten his name you have. But explain Arnold’s poetic fluidity he did. Ye - e - e - es!