Screw The Moralists

One of the ear­li­est descrip­tions of what the intel­li­gence ser­vices term “black ops” and “wet-work” is given in the tenth book of the Iliad, some­times called the Doloneia after one of the char­ac­ters. It’s an extremely unpleas­ant book, as is much of the Iliad for any­one with a weak stom­ach, or a sen­ti­men­tal­ist view of warfare.

“Black ops” refers to super­secret, unof­fi­cial, and pos­si­bly ille­gal intel­li­gence oper­a­tions. “Wet-work” means assas­si­na­tion. Nei­ther of these events can be acknowl­edged or even alluded to in recorded com­mu­ni­ca­tions. They occur when a gov­ern­ment wants them to occur, and that’s it. No file or dossier is kept con­cern­ing them.

In the Doloneia, we read how two Achaean war­riors, Odysseus and Diomedes, secretly cross enemy lines on an espi­onage assign­ment. In the course of their mis­sion they cap­ture, inter­ro­gate, and then kill a coun­ter­spy named Dolon, explain­ing to the luck­less man that it is sim­ply not in their inter­est to let him live. They then pro­ceed coldly to despatch another twelve sleep­ing enemy sol­diers, includ­ing the king of the Thra­cians. Odysseus and Diomedes return to base safely, bring­ing back cru­cial infor­ma­tion, much cap­tured materiel, and the blood-soaked gar­ments of Dolon as an offer­ing to Athena.

When I teach the Iliad, stu­dents often raise an intrigu­ing ques­tion about the Doloneia. How, they ask, does the behav­ior of Odysseus and Diomedes com­port with the Greek ideal of a warrior’s aris­teia, or “noble excel­lence” in bat­tle? If aris­teia is man­i­fested in coura­geous con­fronta­tion with an armed enemy, how can killing a cap­tured spy, or unarmed sleep­ing sol­diers, be any­thing other than cow­ardly and base?

There’s no sat­is­fac­tory answer to this ques­tion. Black ops and wet-work are merely the less savory side of human con­flict, a war­fare with­out hero­ism or drama. They are done out of neces­sity and exi­gency, and the moral sense that we bring to judge ordi­nary human acts is held in abeyance. There isn’t an intel­li­gence ser­vice on this planet that doesn’t indulge in ille­gal acts and assas­si­na­tion when it is polit­i­cally nec­es­sary to do so, no mat­ter what pious clap­trap gov­ern­ments feed to their cit­i­zenry. Only stu­pid lib­er­als are dis­turbed by this fact.

In the poetry world, squea­mish­ness about morals is a dis­abling lim­i­ta­tion. It pre­vents a poet from fol­low­ing his inner prompt­ings. And in lit­er­ary crit­i­cism it con­duces to the infan­tile view that poetry is expected to sup­port a cer­tain moral view of the uni­verse (i.e. one’s own). In other words, no poem is allowed to raise an issue or take a stance that con­flicts with the critic’s eth­i­cal or polit­i­cal code. This aes­thetic atti­tude is what you might term The Play­ground Con­sen­sus School of Poetic Appre­ci­a­tion. As long as a poem com­ports with our lit­tle set of rules and reg­u­la­tions, as long as it doesn’t threaten our ortho­dox pieties, as long as we can fit it into what We-And-Our-Enlightened-Community accept as the proper way of view­ing life and behav­ior, then it’s OK. It has our Good House­keep­ing Seal of Approval. But if it doesn’t meet these criteria—well then, it isn’t good poetry, or it isn’t poetry at all. We can reject it tout court, with­out even con­sid­er­ing its tech­ni­cal mer­its. This atti­tude is extremely com­mon among Amer­i­cans, who still suf­fer from a Puri­tan hang­over, and espe­cially among women, who are tim­o­rous and con­formist by nature.

You see this atti­tude mate­ri­al­ize on web­site work­shops all the time. Some­one writes and posts a poem. Some­one else reads it and imme­di­ately charges that it is “offen­sive.” (This is now a rec­og­nized code word for sig­nal­ing to a poet You’re in poten­tial polit­i­cal trou­ble!) The poet lamely tries to explain that his poem ought not to be con­sid­ered “offen­sive” for such-and-such rea­sons. Oth­ers chime in, either ampli­fy­ing the attack, or doing their best to deflect it by com­ing up with even more com­plex rea­sons why the poem in ques­tion can be seen as within the pale of pro­pri­ety and deco­rous­ness and bien-pensant ortho­doxy. On and on it goes, and even­tu­ally any­one tak­ing part in the dis­cus­sion inter­nal­izes this implicit les­son: Don’t post any poem that ques­tions the eth­i­cal or polit­i­cal assump­tions of our read­er­ship! You can attack the views of out­siders with impunity, but not OURS!

When I read these exchanges, I find myself wish­ing that the poet would respond to his attack­ers by say­ing some­thing along these lines: “Why should I give a swiv­ing hump over the fact that you are dis­turbed or offended by my poem? Do you think I write poems to keep you com­fort­able?” That’s what a men­sch would say. But the work­shops and cha­t­rooms are pop­u­lated by mice.

In com­mon with all of the arts, poetry has no nec­es­sary link with moral­ity. It may be linked with moral­ity, or it can be linked with moral­ity, or it might be linked with moral­ity, but as the irre­al­ist tenses sug­gest, the link­age is purely optional. As with dreams, you can do what­ever you like in a poem.

Peo­ple for whom morals are the para­mount con­cern of life can’t under­stand this. Like Sunday-School teach­ers or scout­mas­ters, they obsess about “what is right,” and they are utterly dumb­founded that oth­ers don’t feel the same way. They stare at you in open-mouthed amaze­ment when you tell them you don’t care a rap about their moral­ity mon­ger­ing. The only way to deal with such peo­ple is to ignore them totally, and to write your poems. And remem­ber that noth­ing gets done in the world with­out a lit­tle black ops and wet-work.