Wild Unsayable: on Wonder and Reason
Wonder as the ultimate emotional/intellectual confluence
Dear Friends,
It’s been a long time since I’ve written on wonder here, and I’ve missed it. I hope that some of you have, too!
I don’t think I’ve shared the title of my PhD thesis—Wild Unsayable: Wonder in Romantic and Contemporary Poetry. The phrase “wild unsayable” comes from one of Mark Doty’s beautiful “Deep Lane” poems from the book of the same title: “slow-charring carbon, out of which sprouts // the wild unsayable.”
“Wild unsayable” felt like an apt title. The feeling of wonder requires us to acknowledge what we don’t—and may never—be able to articulate. It invites us to accept the limits of knowledge more generally, and in doing so, to tap into different kinds of awareness and knowing, ones that do not “lead to certainties or truths about the world or the way things are,” as DeBolla argues in Art Matters. The role that active reflection and questioning play in sustaining wonder cannot be underestimated since, at its heart, the sensation of wonder impresses a challenge upon the wonderer to question.
In Aphorism IX of Aids of Reflection (1825), Coleridge remarks that “In Wonder all Philosophy began: in Wonder it ends: and Admiration fills up the interspace.” I love the idea that admiration or appreciation is its own kind of epistemological tool or modality for navigating the world. For one, because it leads to be a much more enjoyable experience of being alive, and also for what it suggests for our writing, exalting and energizing the work we do to translate this “wild unsayable” into language.
Elsewhere, Coleridge describes the role of wonder as a childlike impulse at the root of philosophical inquiry. But rather than describing wonder as a form of naivety, he emphasizes that wonder is a heightened form of emotional understanding that is not in competition with the interests of reason. As he and Wordsworth recognized, one is inherently useful to the other. Our capacity to wonder contributes to and feeds our critical abilities.
In other words, that tired dichotomy of reason vs. feeling doesn’t quite check out. Outgrowing childlike wonder alone can’t account for the development of reason just as an appetite for reason can’t exist without wonder and curiosity. Here’s how one critic summarizes Coleridge’s thinking: “It is the basic drive that is the spur to reflective thought, but we need to be taught how to think rationally in order to capitalize upon its presence in our emotional makeup.”[4] This suggests that wonder needs to be emotionally and intellectually accommodated; the two, in fact, are inseparable.
I have much more to say about this (I dedicated a whole chapter to it), but I’ll stop here for now in hopes that something above resonated, and that you will sit with the idea of wonder being a place where our emotional and intellectual powers meet, like two rivers joining at the beautiful confluence of inquiry and awe.
xM
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[1] De Bolla, p. 143.
[2] Scott, p. 229.
[3] Ibid, p. 229.
[4] Ibid, p. 229.
Over 25 years of listening to God with children, they've shown me that wonder begets imagination which begets empathy which is the only way we might build a peaceful world. But wonder must be nurtured by offering time and sacred space - to listen, to look. As Montessori so aptly recognized: we may not be able to give our children a peaceful world. But we can give the world peaceful children.
Brilliant! I love the title and the insights you provide in this post. Perfectly timed for me.
What lead you to focus on wonder? (Stories behind PhD focuses are always so intriguing :))
One more question: How can we harness the power of poetry to spark wonder?