To get back to the original question, it might be worthwhile to look at a poem, and ponder what brain science could help us do. Here is a Baudelaire poem:
Le Guignon
Pour soulever un poids si lourd,
Sisyphe, il faudrait ton courage!
Bien qu'on ait du coeur à l'ouvrage,
L'Art est long et le Temps est court.
Loin des sépultures célèbres,
Vers un cimetière isolé,
Mon coeur, comme un tambour voilé,
Va battant des marches funèbres.
— Maint joyau dort enseveli
Dans les ténèbres et l'oubli,
Bien loin des pioches et des sondes;
Mainte fleur épanche à regret
Son parfum doux comme un secret
Dans les solitudes profondes.
It's easy enough to imagine which brain areas will be activated and visible to an MRI machine when we read this. The part of the brain that deals with the French you learned in school; the part that analyzes language; the part that recognizes things you've read before; the part that registers pleasure; etc. But does that tell us anything about either the poem or our relationship with it?
A good reader of the poem will be working on all kinds of interesting things. For example, how Baudelaire's description of melancholy resembles, or doesn't, our experience of melancholy. If it's different, is this interesting to us? Is it like Burton's view of melancholy, or Freud's? Poets are often tricky in what they do. Is Baudelaire being ironic? Intentionally false so as to be provocative? Then you notice that the sestet is a translation of a portion of Gray's Elegy. There is recognition, surprise, and pleasure in this unexpected appearance -- the poets are so wildly different -- what is going on here? What new spin has Baudelaire put on Gray by incorporating this translation into something new? What is the relation of the world-views of these two poets?
In the mid-20th century the prevailing theory was that after you've once read Gray's Elegy, there will forever after be a particular cell, or synapse, or site, or something, in your brain which is devoted to that poem. It was the scientific consensus, and has since collapsed. Things are far more complicated.
It's amusing to think that some poet with access to an MRI machine might make this the criteria for a good poem: he wants a single sonnet to activate every single area of the brain. That would be a fun goal, and would still tell us nothing interesting about either the poem or ourselves.
Le Guignon
Pour soulever un poids si lourd,
Sisyphe, il faudrait ton courage!
Bien qu'on ait du coeur à l'ouvrage,
L'Art est long et le Temps est court.
Loin des sépultures célèbres,
Vers un cimetière isolé,
Mon coeur, comme un tambour voilé,
Va battant des marches funèbres.
— Maint joyau dort enseveli
Dans les ténèbres et l'oubli,
Bien loin des pioches et des sondes;
Mainte fleur épanche à regret
Son parfum doux comme un secret
Dans les solitudes profondes.
It's easy enough to imagine which brain areas will be activated and visible to an MRI machine when we read this. The part of the brain that deals with the French you learned in school; the part that analyzes language; the part that recognizes things you've read before; the part that registers pleasure; etc. But does that tell us anything about either the poem or our relationship with it?
A good reader of the poem will be working on all kinds of interesting things. For example, how Baudelaire's description of melancholy resembles, or doesn't, our experience of melancholy. If it's different, is this interesting to us? Is it like Burton's view of melancholy, or Freud's? Poets are often tricky in what they do. Is Baudelaire being ironic? Intentionally false so as to be provocative? Then you notice that the sestet is a translation of a portion of Gray's Elegy. There is recognition, surprise, and pleasure in this unexpected appearance -- the poets are so wildly different -- what is going on here? What new spin has Baudelaire put on Gray by incorporating this translation into something new? What is the relation of the world-views of these two poets?
In the mid-20th century the prevailing theory was that after you've once read Gray's Elegy, there will forever after be a particular cell, or synapse, or site, or something, in your brain which is devoted to that poem. It was the scientific consensus, and has since collapsed. Things are far more complicated.
It's amusing to think that some poet with access to an MRI machine might make this the criteria for a good poem: he wants a single sonnet to activate every single area of the brain. That would be a fun goal, and would still tell us nothing interesting about either the poem or ourselves.
