Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism

Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism is a masterpiece of novelty in terms of form and compactness that sums up the neoclassical sentiment on literary theory and criticism. Perhaps prodigious because it was written when he was only 20 years old, Pope’s work contains an epigram by Horace with traces of Quintilian, Boileau and Dryden—which is rather memorable for its brilliant style. Written in heroic couplets, the work revitalizes familiar teachings and makes them sparkle.

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Modern American critic Walter Bate, in an effort to render a topical outline of Pope’s poetics —sums up the Essay under three major topics, which is “by no means intended to attribute an argumentative or reasoned order to the poem.”

The first part compares poets and critics—and comes with pieces of advice for critics— as the general qualities needed by the critic can be found in the first one hundred couplets. After presenting knowledge of nature in its general forms—defining nature which needs of both wit and judgment to conceive it, Pope famously declares—

Learn hence for Ancient Rules a just Esteem;

To copy Nature is to copy Them.

“Classic texts, like Nature are a standard and guide. Their balance, harmony and good proportion are evident in their parts as well as demonstrated in the whole. In other words, Wit is Nature—for it instances something that we have all thought but whose sheer truth the poet now makes compelling through his language:”

True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest,

What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well exprest,

Something whose truth convinces at Sight we find

That gives us back the Image of our Mind. (297–300)

In itself a compendium of critical principles—or a sophisticated, witty poem with much reading and reflection in it, Essay on Criticism showcases Pope’s own view of literary borrowing—thus: Poets, like merchants should repay with something of their own what they take from others, not, like pirates, make prizes of all they meet.”

The neoclassicist creed, according to Pope, therefore is to imitate the ancient authors and to adopt the critical precepts that these authors and their texts embody. Two directions are afforded by this concept of imitation. First is the more self-conscious and restricted side based on authority and passed models that leads to the writing of imitations. Art's first requirement is its direct appeal to reason or pasion.

Second has to do with the broader side that rejects them by placing truth to general nature. The more universal and far-reaching the truth desired or conveyed by art, the closer art comes to fulfilling its primary aim. And as interpreter of Nature, then, the poet must divest himself of the prejudices of his age and country, in order to grasp and disclose general truths, which will always be the same.

 This is followed by the practical laws for the critic in the second part. This includes, for instance, the critic’s prerogative to seek the author’s aim and the critic’s fallibility in mistaking the part of a literary for the whole. Pope tirades critics who do not only come up with partial readings, but also those who are proud and arrogant.

 The third part—essayed out from lines 560 to the end of the concerns with the ideal character of the critic. Perhaps echoing the moral uprightness advanced by the Roman Horace, Pope deems it proper for the critic to have the qualities of integrity, modesty, tact and even courage. This calls for the concern for the critic to be morally liable—which translates that the critic can be the ordinary man—whose uplift is chief concern. 

20 Minutes before Takeoff

Reading Leoncio Deriada’s “Airport on Mactan Island”

In Leoncio Deriada’s “Airport on Mactan Island,” a family who has lived near the Mactan airport for a decade, is presented with a number of dilemmas.

One day, the mother, unable to stand the noise of the “steel monsters” or airplanes, frets and desperately wants to leave their house. The father’s dilemma is caused only by the dilemma of the wife. His wife pressures him to consider moving out despite the lot’s sentimental value to him. He is torn between leaving the land—which he inherited—and helping his wife ease her troubles. Their son, meanwhile, is caught up with his own problem. He is exploring the possibility of getting a job in the factory and at the same time is helping his father sell guitars. He is more inclined, though, to get the job rather than help his father.

After I asked my juniors class to stage it in the classroom, three students turned in noteworthy insights, clarifying a number of realities raised by the literary work.

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In a piece titled “Just the Way It Is,” Irene Grace Lim begins, “In a usual family setup, the man’s decision is final. At times, his decision is unchangeable. We see the same in Deriada’s “Airport on Mactan Island.”

“The husband’s decision was still the final decision for their family. And although the wife was already starting to lose her mind, out of desperation she wanted to get out of that place, the husband still stood with his unshakeable decision to stay. For him, there’s nowhere to go and there’s no one interested in their land. The man said they could get used to the noise of the airport just like the way he did.

“Though his wife was already desperate, driven to leave the house and even the man she married, the man stood by his decision, which shows that essence that while woman wavers, man maneuvers, then prevails.”

Lissa Angela Suyo, meanwhile, focused on the wife’s character, labeling the piece as a matter of “Faith vs. Fate.” She writes, “Like most Filipino Christians in Cebu, the mother’s faith in the Divine Being is on the Sto. Niño. She prays fervently to the statue so that their condition will improve and so that her son’s job away from their place could somehow change their fate. Unfortunately, faith alone did not help her get what she hoped for. With her husband not cooperating, her son getting rejected, with their home daily bombarded daily, she broke down. She lost faith even in her own self that she could maintain her sanity. She was disgusted with her fate. She hoped that by being a wife, her life would change. She wanted to change their fate, but she did not take action to do that. All she did was to complain.

“The wife was so desperate for a new life that she fell apart when she found out that her son, their last chance, didn’t get the job. She believed that to live in poverty was their fate. She thought that by having faith in the Sto. Niño, her fate will change. In the end, she broke apart...she has lost faith in the Sto. Niño, which strengthened her belief that this was, indeed, her fate.”

Then, in a more sweeping effort to read the piece, Casten Guanzon writes, “Leoncio Deriada opens our eyes to some of the more overlooked aspects of the marginalized poverty, what goes on in the home. The play does not focus on poverty or exploitation but rather the domestic scene in a family whose lives have been twisted by progress. The play starts building momentum when the wife and the husband are left alone in the house and it is here that we see two things in contrast: desperation and action.”

For Guanzon, “Desperation is displayed by the wife who nags the husband to leave the place, eventually hating him as much as the airport and its demonic noise. Her husband, almost her exact opposite, is always controlled and calm in his replies except for some emotional peaks on his part. In the end, she breaks down when the Sto. Niño fails to help her son get the job ultimately failing to deliver her from her own hell. She is distraught and unstable, eventually driven to attempt desecrating the statue as her final act to stop the noise.

“But what of action? After all, is it not the wife who starts making plans and suggesting other places? Yes it is; but it is the husband who has done something and, having failed, focuses on adapting to the airport and improvising for anything in their life it has changed. The husband is the one portraying action here. He is practical. Having tried and failed to sell the land, he focuses instead on maintaining their status of life. The wife, on the other hand, is prepared to make blind leaps in her eagerness to escape that hundredth circle of hell filled with its unholy abominations of steel. She is blind to her husband's reasoning because she, in her state, does not or chooses not to see its sense.”

While Lim and Suyo recognized the distraught character in the wife and the composure of the husband, Guanzon saw the play’s binary opposites—the husband’s action and the wife’s desperation.

All of them agreed on how the dilemma of the wife, which embodies the tragedy designed by the author, is not resolved at all.

Fallacies and Truths

The Writer Walks to the Podium, And

Today, the writer will (speak about an) elevate (d piece of) himself.  In various other ways he has long tried to do this—talking to himself, discussing with teachers, conversing with friends, or grandstanding.

In the past, he has written letters to friends, brothers and sisters, teachers, classmates, and those people whom he knows and who knows him.  These people are not more than 20 individuals who are either simply familiar (just because he knows their names and faces) or really familiar (because they know him and he knows them better than other people).

The pieces he has written may have either been poetry, or essays mostly authored in first person. Some of them even have included artworks, sketches, variations of famous lyric poetry, short quotes, and even his own verse (which he would rewrite now and then until he feels they are poetry enough).

Most of the time, he insists to give them to these persons because he feels constantly driven to do so. Through a certain poem, essay or excerpt, he conveys aspects of himself. 

In fact, these people would thank him for the effort. They would thank him for the odd opportunity of being written for unexpectedly, but also for the rare chance of receiving a poem for a gift. That something is written for them by him simply surprises or especially flatters them. Some would utterly thank him for the poetry enclosed. While others would relate to him how an artwork made them ponder for a while.

Through such pieces, he honestly conveys himself to them. Through them, he believes he shares his soul, because in these poems and essays, he discloses his thoughts, he articulates his emotion. In all these, he lays bare his sobriety.

On the part of those who receive his “gifts,” they would feel elated and grateful because somebody thinks of them, or because in a way or a hundred others, somebody, to the very least, regards them. On his part, this entails one true thing for which he ought to be thankful himself—his aching desire to draw an idea or enunciate each emotion, spontaneous or contrived, good or otherwise, in fine and creative written form. All this special time he has come to realize that two things in his poems and works are unmistakably consistent, or persistent: pain and glory, or worded otherwise, agony and ecstasy.

These extremes, expressions in themselves, have always been apparent in his metaphors or insinuated in his narration. Though these pieces which he has enjoyed putting on paper do not necessarily conform to the numerous literary standards or rules on style of his day, they have to make sense for perhaps they have been spontaneously written—but always to manifest an undisguised spirit born to pain and redeemed by ecstasy, speaking truth and nothing less.

His poetry, for instance, contains tension, some conflict fragmented either in details or in mixed metaphors. Though one particular poem written out of angst appears to have a forced ending, the person to whom he has given the work would tell him that someone who writes these lines, or even just comes to think about it is one tormented spirit—“a grim soul,” in fact.


A narration on a harrowing experience, meanwhile, may seem scattered or disorganized, but one thing there is the certain choice of words that depict morbidity and everything else it entails. Both forms, poetic or prosaic, say about only one true thing—pain and all it offers, agony and all it gives.

At times, because he spontaneously writes these poems and essays, he also makes it a point to revise them before he finally gives them to persons whom he knows and who can relate to them. Revising these unsolicited pieces enables him to be more insightful about every thought, emotion or experience therein. Because spontaneity and therefore truths among these pieces may be sacrificed or unfortunately wasted if he revises his works, he is better convinced that the unrevised ones tell the best thing in this conscious endeavor. 

Every unedited or unpolished piece contains the grim provocation, the raw emotion, the stolid person. Yet, along with the ill forms and sad projections is his heart for the good—the highest hope, the unwavering belief in the ultimate goodness in all things, a constant, optimistic disposition that will banish all the afflictions rendered by reality.

Some three

Jose Garcia Villa

We first meet him as the author of “The Coconut Poem,” a lyric brimming and overflowing with coconut milk and sexual juices whose testosterone-loaded innuendoes caused him his expulsion from the University of the Philippines. Enough said.

But what else could you make of JGV?  Never contented with the commonplaceness of the literary environment he was in, the self-proclaimed Doveglion [dove eagle lion] Jose Garcia Villa literally rose among the ranks of writers to his own ivory tower.

An arrogant literary critic who scathed other writers’ works more than cared for them, JGV gained the ire of other promising sensibilities, perhaps primarily Angela Manalang Gloria whose poetic works he greatly berated. No one cared for his poetry which others had declared no more than intellectual masturbations that made only him orgasmic [and him alone].

But when he started making sense to other people with his comma poetry and philosophy, no one bothered him in his ivory tower. Up there, the self-proclaimed prophet of poetry could have never been more alone.

Henry David Thoreau

When Henry David Thoreau wrote that he is perhaps most anxious when he is in the throngs of people, he did not really complain of agoraphobia nor did he publicly declare that he admires some of them in private. He merely harped on how man can attain wholeness through self-possession.

Living with Ralph Waldo Emerson could not have made him more social—only antisocial. A religious minister who himself fell out from the fold, Emerson’s influence on the young Thoreau helped create the masterpiece titled Walden, an insightful individualistic journal that highlighted how man can go back to his primal nature and still survive civilization.

But Thoreau’s Walden campout is not just an NSTP immersion; it is a return to man's spiritual nature in which  he can rethink his purpose not really by living alone away from the noise or far from the madding crowd—but by practicing simplicity which is man’s true nature.

Emily Dickinson

American recluse Emily Dickinson is one interesting soul who selected her own society, choosing few for many and simplicity for ornament. With her hyphenated—and her Caps and Lowercase intimations about flowers and things, life and death, morbidity and turgidity, she stood out through history as another genius of the language.

Emily Dickinson’s life seemed no more than that of Eleanor Rigby in Paul McCartney’s song—“Aaaaa look at all the lonely people”—and if she were alive today, she would have preferred less than 10 friends on her Facebook account. She would not really refuse a means of networking like FB or even multiply, as she sought to bond and correspond with people following too many deaths in her family.

But would you ever forgive Dickinson for being so selfish she relished her own poetry by herself? Her poetry was made so private by her that her genius was only discovered up on a roof after her death.

Villa, Dickinson and Thoreau must have attended only one school—the University of Solitary where the major graduate paper was an Individual vs. Society thesis. By insisting on individuality in their rhetoric and poetry, consciously or otherwise they defied an existing social order that rather imposed conformity monotony lethargy. All three graduated with highest honors.

Pagbúhay kan Lengwáhe

Kadaklán na beses, kun saén an saróng lengwahe nagngángarongátong mawará o magadán, dakúl an puwédeng gibóhon tangáning buháyon iní. Kun maaráman nanggád kan saróng komunidád na tibáad magadán an lengwahe nindá, magíbo sindá nin mga paági pára buháyon o padagúson pa iní.

Kaipúhan na mísmong an komunidád an mámuyang magsalbár kan saindáng sadíring lengwáhe. Mas oróg na makabuluhán kun paháhalagahán sa mísmong mga gawégawé o kultura kan mga táwong iní an lengwáheng ginagámit kan dikit sa saindá, o an ináapod na minoríya. Kaipúhan man na gástusan an mga gigibóhon na iní— puwédeng magmukná nin mga kurso o maggámit nin disiplínang ma-ádal dapít sa lengwáhe, mag-andám nin mga materyáles dángan mag-engganyár nin mga paratukdó na iyó an mabalangíbog kan lengwáhe.

Oróg na kaipúhan an mga lingwísta—sinda iyó an mga magámit kan lengwáhe—an katuyuhán iyó na maitalá, mahimáyhimáy, saká maisúrat iní. Kaipúhan kan mga táwong magbása dángan magsúrat sa sadiri nindáng lengwáhe, kun ma’wot nindáng magpadágos iní; kun má’wot nindáng sindá mísmo magdánay.


Villa, Ciudad Iloilo
Hunio 2008

Sa Puro Kan Kadlagan

Probaran mong imahinaron kun ano an ginibo ninda ki Armando.
Pagkadakop saiya sa engkwentro, dinara siya sa puro kan kadlagan.
Duman hinubaan siya ninda, saka nginirisihan ta’ mayo nin bulbol.
Tinagpas an saiyang dungo sagkod talinga,
Hinuldo saka dinuldog an saiyang mga mata,
Tinaga an saro niyang kamot, saka siya kinadog-kadog.
Isinulmok siya sa daga, rinugtas an saiyang buto sagkod bayag,
Dangan isinu’so sa saiya man sanang nguso. Dai sinda nakuntento;
Sinapsap ninda an duwang lapnad nang suso,
Pinalaob siya kan saro sainda saka kinado-kado.
Nag-aagrutong pa siya kan badilon sa payo kan saro sa sainda.
Pagkatapos siyang iwalat para ipaon sa mga hantik
Ruminulukso sinda sa naghaharak-hatak na salog, nagkararigos
Nganing magkawaraswas an langsa sa mga hawak ninda.


Susog sa "Edge of the Woods"
ni Luis Cabalquinto
2001