The Power of Limits

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 I took the title of this lesson from the above book. The author of The Power of Limits argues that nature is full of constraints that create particular kinds of patterns. He points out that the existence of these constraints does not at all prevent there from being a huge variety of things, but in fact is necessary for there to be variety. 

We like to think that freedom means lack of constraints. There are, of course, constraints that reduce freedom, but there are there constraints that increase it. People often misunderstand what "freedom" means, thinking it means that anything at all goes, and if you aren't free from constraints, you aren't free at all. This thinking is what lies behind opposition to the ideas of there being a biological human nature, or of there being cultural universals. 

But if you think about it, we have plenty of evidence that constraints aren't reducing freedom, particularly freedom of expression. The fact that religion is a cultural universal doesn't make people less expressive--it makes us more expressive. It's one more element in human cultures, and it adds to the variety of ways humans can express themselves, understand the cosmos, and be human. 

Does the fact that languages are constrained by grammar and syntax in any way prevent us from expressing ourselves, or running out of not only things to say, but ways to say them? Absolutely not. 

The same is true of literature. 

The use of constraints in poetry--whether they be the use of alliteration, end-rhyme, assonance, consonance, rhyme schemes, formalism, parallelism, or any number of other poetic tropes I'll be discussing--actually gives us more ways of saying things, and often new ways of saying things and thinking them. 

If we have to hit the rhyme at the end of the line, we have to think about how to get there. If the thing we were planning to write won't work to get a rhyme, we have to rework that line--or, we have to rework the previous line to get a word that rhymes better or easier, which will then cause us to have to rethink the next line anyway--and then, before you know it, you have something you didn't expect to have written. New ideas, new thoughts emerge. And if you're surprised, you can certainly expect your reader to be.

Art isn't supposed to be easy. The word "art" comes from "artisan," meaning a craftsman. You are supposed to be crafting your art. We are working in constraints as it is--the constraints of grammar and syntax, for example (though poets can challenge these, they can only challenge them within their pre-existing constraints)--and the addition of more only makes us have to pay more and more attention to what we are doing. In an odd way, by making us focus more, by making us not write on automatic pilot, the kinds of constraints one finds in, say, a sonnet can actually make you more in control of your work. 

If you spread gasoline around on the ground and light it, you'll get a quick conflagration, and then it will go out. If, however, you build an engine, you will still light gasoline, but that gasoline will now be directed into useful work. You can do many more things with an engine than you can with a conflagration. One you can burn grass and trees with; the other you can use to create cars and tractors and airplanes and factories. Constraints like poetic forms are like engines. With them, you can do a great many things--a great many more things than you can do with standard, non-poetic prose.