The Literature of Atmosphere
Edward Moore, PhD
©2013
Atmosphere is the all-important thing, for the final criterion of authenticity is not the dovetailing of a plot but the creation of a given sensation.
~ H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature"
The English word ‘atmosphere’ derives from an ancient Greek word (ATMOS) meaning “vapor” and the Latin sphaera, sphere; literally, the word means the vapor surrounding our sphere, or globe, i.e., earth. When used in relation to a work of art, specifically literature, the term denotes an inescapable emotional or aesthetic force or style that permeates the work, giving it the necessary “staying power” that separates true art from mere production or entertainment. In our time, when post-modern influences have caused us to view any and every work of art as merely a production of a given moment, a set of signifiers whose meaning is culturally determined and therefore – ephemeral; in such a time it is important, I think, to find some element in works of art that can be owned by the person, subjected to his or her own unique stance in and toward the world, and rendered meaningful, in a manner irrespective of inter-personal communication and the ethical demands of such. In short, if I determine a particular work to be a masterpiece because I enjoy dwelling in its atmosphere, I have come as close as possible to a pre- or even (perhaps) non-linguistic appreciation of said artwork. Understanding fully that thought without language is impossible, I feel it is possible to approach closely to source of thought, in a non-linguistic fashion, by focusing on the atmosphere of certain works. This focus will, of course, lead to the necessary conceptualization that makes all experience meaningful and iterable. But as a touchstone for aesthetic value, atmosphere can serve as a solid ground upon which to establish a humanistic – as opposed to a cultural or ideological – theory of art. By “humanistic” I mean the natural set of responses that arise from a pre-reflective attitude toward the structured examples of life that we call art. I realize I am begging many questions here: nature as something stable and uniformly accessible; structure as strictly the result of a human (reflective, conscious) act; and art as an effort to save oneself from the miasma of meaninglessness that is destructive to all cultures (especially our present one, so-called). I beg some questions for the sake of this thesis: The desire to persist in being is born of the response to an atmosphere that calls the creative powers of the person forth, into a realm of possibilities.
When I was a young reader – I mean very young, single digits – I responded to poems and stories based upon their atmospheric impact. For example, Beowulf struck me as a “blue and white” work, a work of winter – a clear and enjoyable winter. The violence and sorrow of that poem were ameliorated by the atmosphere surrounding Heorot, the rough courtesy of the coastguard who first encountered Beowulf, the bright feast scenes in the mead-hall, etc. … As a child, these were the elements of the poem on which I focused, and these elements fueled my fantasy-life, which eventually led me to the professional study of literature, philosophy, and other conceptual artifacts of Western culture. Indeed, only later, after immersion in academia, did I find it necessary to interpret the poem on a variety of “culturally responsible” levels – all of which took me away from the initial impact of that masterpiece. I am not saying that a superficial reading of a great work of art is preferable to a profound study of such, a study informed by all the currents of contemporary philosophy, psychology, and critical theory; no, I am merely questioning whether theories of art dependent upon elaborate conceptual schemas are really preferable to the immediate accessibility given to us by the closest thing we can get to a pre-linguistic response to a linguistic construct: atmosphere.
The poems of Keats I found to be “brown” works, encrusted with the dinginess of early nineteenth-century atmosphere: coal and engines and ugly industrial towns. This, despite the fact that Keats inhabited an atmosphere far removed from the labors of the working-class. Nevertheless, my inherited notions of his era forced a sort of irony into my appreciation of his poetry. I recognized a master, albeit one who had lived in a rather aesthetically unpleasing period. Granted, a production like Lamia required the rather morbid cast of mind of a disillusioned industrial-era aesthete. I love the work, it moves me … but it cannot compare to the manor-house gentility of the Gawain-poet, whose purposeful archaism in an already archaic age moves me beyond words. The sight of the words on the page, the survival of runic letters like Þ and Ʒ lend an extra air of antiquity to poems that are products of a mindset far removed from my own. Identification is a wonderful feeling: when one can relate to a writer and feel the inspiration that caused him to put pen to paper. But the disorientation produced by an alien theme, a strange mind, an unfamiliar atmosphere – that is what cultivates the mind, and engenders a liberalism, a tolerance, that is necessary for the continuation of the human project, the “conversation of Western civilization” (as Rorty put it).
