The Monumentalist Manifesto

Permanence, Gravity, Magnificence

Preamble: In a previous essay, entitled “The Iron Lyre,” the author advocated for the revival of sublime and ambitious art in general and epic and tragic poetry in particular. The following manifesto can be viewed as an extension of and complement to that piece. Herein is offered a brief but more precise picture of the poetics desired by those who harken to the iron lyre, irrespective of genre: a monumentalist poetics.

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“He will talk largely of human virtue or power, and of the way by which it may be made perfect, so that men, being moved not by fear and aversion, but solely by the affect of joy, may endeavor to do as much as they can to live under the rule of reason.”

–Baruch Spinoza

“The chief work of literary men in dealing with language, and of poets especially, lies in feeling back along the ancient lines of advance.”

–Ernest Fenollosa

We desire a poetry that embodies the qualities of great monuments: permanence, gravity, magnificence. We desire poems which partake of every sense of the word “monumental.” The term derives from the Latin verb monere, which can mean to remind, to advise, or to warn. Great poetry reminds us of important truths and feelings we would do well to meditate upon; it advises us, often by example more than by direct statement, of how we ought to think, act, and live; it warns us of suffering, both that which we can avoid and that which we cannot.

Any poem worth reading possesses insight. If the insight is already known to the reader, the poem reminds; if the insight is unknown, the poem advises. We mean “advise” both in the sense of “inform” and in the sense of “suggest to action,” for how we act follows from what we believe to be true. Should a poem advise us negatively—of what we ought not to do—it also serves to warn.

What is the purpose of art? Ultimately, it is to deepen our understanding of and appreciation for reality, conditioning us to be more joyful, serene, and compassionate in the face of suffering and mystery. Religion and philosophy may also fulfill this function, but whereas religion operates largely through faith and ritual, and philosophy operates through conceptual analysis, art operates through the ordered presentation of sensations, images, symbols, rhetoric, and scenarios to vividly communicate ideas and provoke elucidating experiences.

Great poetry is always monumental in the sense that it is ambitious and serious. Art need not be ambitious and serious to be good, but the greatest art must be ambitious and serious, for the greatest art is that which affects us most profoundly regarding the gravest and most important aspects of our condition.

A poem is monumental when, like a literal monument, it attempts to permanently memorialize and glorify a particular experience, idea, or series of events. A monumental poem is a statement of something that is always worth saying, and is accordingly built to last.

One should write every poem with as much care for its language and content as if it were to be etched in stone—like the epigrams of Ancient Greece, written to be engraved upon monuments. Poetry ought to contain the best thoughts of the poet’s mind, offered as a gift to the world. From the poet’s perspective, one’s writing is what one leaves of oneself to posterity, and every word ought to be chosen as scrupulously as if written in one’s own blood.

The greatest poetry demands not only beautiful and inventive language, but wise thoughts, profound conceptions, sensitivity, perceptiveness, and compassion—to nourish others, one must have nutriment to offer them. Therefore, it is necessary for a poet to cultivate their soul and their mind as much as their writing. They must dedicate their lives not only to their art, but to studying works of literature, philosophy, religion, and science, developing friendships, taking on responsibilities, exploring the world, formulating their worldview, and confronting their own failures and suffering honestly. We do not view figures like Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe as mere poets, but as sages, voices of nations. Their depth of mind enabled the depths of their art, and all writers should all strive for such depth of mind.

Often, people use the word “monumental” to describe objects of great size. We do not demand that poems be of great size, but rather, that they possess largeness of theme and spirit. Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that the grandest and most ambitious poetry often finds its adequate expression in long forms such as the drama and the epic. Therefore, we fiercely encourage the reinvigoration of these genres which have given us the lion’s share of our finest literature, particularly given their moribund status in contemporary art. For more on this subject, please see the aforementioned “Iron Lyre” essay.

The proponents of Aestheticism and Symbolism used to say that poetry ought to exist for its own sake and “aspire to the condition of music.” By this they meant that poetry ought to be self-contained, sensuous, suggestive, and abstract. This ethos, so influential on Modernism and Postmodernism, produced a great deal of obscure, insubstantial, and even meaningless poetry. We believe that poetry ought, instead, to aspire to the condition of architecture. Vitruvius wrote that architecture ought to possess three virtues: firmitas, utilitas, and venustas—strength, utility, and beauty. As both a tool and a piece of public art, a building must stand, it must be useful, and it must be inspiring and joyous to behold. Similarly, a poem ought to be well-built, communicate something valuable to the reader, and be beautiful.

It is no coincidence that monumental architecture is most commonly associated with religious, judicial, and funerary structures. When we find ourselves tasked with housing and expressing the final truths of life—metaphysics, ethics, and mortality—we rise to the occasion and produce structures designed to inspire reverence. Similarly, we desire a poetry that can inspire reverence, that has the solemn grandeur of a cathedral, a tomb, or a court of law.

The moral stakes of architecture are obvious—a structure that is shoddily built, impractical, or ugly is a bane or even a danger to its environment and inhabitants. In truth, however, all art possesses such moral stakes. Every piece of media influences and forms the society in which it exists. Poems take up mental space just as buildings take up physical space, and have a similar obligation to shelter and enrich those who inhabit them.

Like a building, a poem must be well-made in order to be maximally useful—it must be complete, internally harmonious, coherent, and intelligible to most effectively communicate. It must also, however, be beautiful. Beauty adds great emotional and therefore rhetorical power to a statement and is therefore indispensable to those who would communicate most effectively. Beauty provides sensory delights, but its principal function is to move us toward a deeper appreciation and understanding of our own natures and of life itself; for the perception of beauty is the scent by which we follow the trail of the good.

The epigraph from Fenollosa suggests a spiritual kinship between Monumentalism and Imagism. This kinship does indeed exist, and an examination of the history of Imagism may provide a useful catalog of dos and don'ts. We too believe, with Fenollosa, Pound, and company, that poetry at present ought to strive for austerity, impersonality, precision, and the rekindling of an archaic spirit to counter modern etiolation and decadence. We decidedly do not believe that imagery is the only proper way to express ideas, nor that an abandonment of traditional techniques is desirable, much less necessary to purify the dialect of the tribe. Indeed, the senseless abandonment of effective artistic techniques honed and perfected over many centuries is one of the surest ways to hamstring oneself in the pursuit of the greatest art possible. Our goal is not to reinvent the wheel so that we can boast that we did so, but to craft powerful vehicles that will run forever.

Imagism failed because its conception of poetry was too small, its ambitions too limited, its forms too paltry and sterile—it exhausted its own faddish possibilities almost immediately. Pound swiftly abandoned his pretensions to being a nouveau antique and helped to transform Modernism from a promising paleo-classicism into nearly its opposite—a pessimistic indulgence in neuroses. We shall not make the same mistake. We aim for a more sustainable inertia toward renewal—slow, vast, and brimming with endless possibility. Monumentalism is not a reactionary school bent on destruction of all but its own orthodox precepts, but a campaign to reform the sensibility of our letters, to transform and nourish the soul of our civilization, preparing the ground for the noble, confident, ambitious art of the future. The true avant-garde of our day is not the latest exercise in perverse novelty (the umpteenth regurgitation of Modernist antics) but the fierce reassertion of human dignity and universal values against the prevailing postmodern fatalism which poisons us. We are that avant-garde.

There are many kinds of poetry and ways of writing that can delight, instruct, and inspire, and variety in art, like variety in the gene pool, is necessary for health. We do not seek to prescribe one aesthetic sensibility for all, but merely to advocate for the greatest and most lasting art that humankind can achieve, and also promote the specific sort of poetry which we feel is most necessary, yet often most lacking, in this enervated, small-minded, sentimental, rudderless 21st century. We desire, therefore, a poetry that possesses the solidity and virility of Assyrian reliefs and Maya pyramids; the symmetry and humanism of Art Deco skyscrapers and Greek temples; the architectonic grandeur and sublimity of a mass by Bach, Mozart, or Bruckner; the stentorian voice and high seriousness of Aeschylus and Milton; the ferocious spiritual honesty of Spinoza and Weil. At the same time, we desire a poetry which is not a slavish imitation of these past triumphs from across the ages, but new and original embodiments of the monumentalist spirit fit to rival them, and which aspire to exceed them.

There will be readers a thousand years from now who will wish to read the great, monumental literature of the previous thousand years. We owe it to them to write it.

Elijah Perseus Blumov is a poet, critic, and host of the poetry analysis podcast, Versecraft. His poems have been published by or are forthcoming from periodicals such as Literary Matters, Birmingham Poetry Review, Able Muse Review, Think Journal, and others. He lives in Chicago.