Beauty in Memory
Our lives run
like fingers over sandpaper,
days, weeks, years, centuries.
And there were times when we spent
long years in tears.
I still walk around the column
where so often I waited,
listening to the water gurgling
from apocalyptic mouths,
always astonished
at the water’s flirtatiousness
as it splintered on the basin’s surface
until the Column’s shadow fell across your face.
- from the Plague Column, by Jaroslav Seifert, trans from the Czech by Ewold Osers
like fingers over sandpaper,
days, weeks, years, centuries.
And there were times when we spent
long years in tears.
I still walk around the column
where so often I waited,
listening to the water gurgling
from apocalyptic mouths,
always astonished
at the water’s flirtatiousness
as it splintered on the basin’s surface
until the Column’s shadow fell across your face.
- from the Plague Column, by Jaroslav Seifert, trans from the Czech by Ewold Osers
Art transcending Politics
A visit to France in the 1920s introduced him to surrealism and modernist writers, yet Seifert’s work remained close to his working-class beginnings as well as being influenced by current events and a sense of nationalism. The Nobel Prize committee described him as a poet “loved as dearly for the astonishing clarity, musicality and sensuality of his poems as for his unembellished but deeply felt identification with his country and its people.” He often wrote of love, and his poems show a commitment to art that transcended politics.
- The Poetry Foundation
- The Poetry Foundation
The Lyrical State of Mind
"For while the mind in a state of pathos burns with impatience and seethes with fervor in its endeavor to master an unsatisfactory situation and often succeeds in so doing with a well-intentioned but nevertheless one-sided straightforwardness, the lyrical state is a state without exertion of will or determination; it is a state of serenity that is neither patient nor impatient, a state of quiet experiencing of those values upon which man bases the most profound, the most fundamental, and the most essential foundations of his equilibrium and of his ability to inhabit this world, to inhabit it in the only possible manner, i.e., poetically, lyrically, to borrow from Hölderlin."
- Jaroslav Seifert, Nobel Lecture, 1984, on winning the Nobel Prize in Literature (translated from Czech). Click here for entire lecture.
Finding Beauty in
Memory & Everyday Life
Jaroslav Seifert and AN Whitehead
Jaroslav Seifert (1901–1986) was a Czech poet, journalist, and Nobel laureate whose lyrical and humanistic poetry, often infused with themes of beauty, memory, and resistance, resonated with the spirit of literary modernism while remaining deeply rooted in the cultural and historical realities of Czechoslovakia. I want to bring him into conversation with the philosophy of AN Whitehead, building upon ideas Seifert develops in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.
In his lecture, Seibert discusses the difference between two significant states of mind: the lyrical and the pathos-driven or "the pathetic." He thinks both are necessary for life and society.
Seifert defines the lyrical state as one where the individual experiences a serene unity with the world, characterized by a calm enjoyment of life's values, leading to a sense of equilibrium and the ability to inhabit the world poetically. This state of mind is non-judgmental and not preoccupied with improving the world. It has truth in it, because its truth is seeing into the essences of ordinary life in an intuitive way, as mediated by the arts, especially (for him) poetry.
In contrast, the pathetic state arises from a tension between reality and personal ideals, driven by dissatisfaction and a desire to achieve justice, freedom, and human dignity, often leading to active efforts to transform an unsatisfactory situation. It has a restlessness to it, a sense of being driven toward something more, toward a future that is not yet, but should be. It is part of what you might call a prophetic imagination.
Recognizing Beauty in Everyday Life
Seifert’s insight is especially relevant in our present historical moment, when the primary mode of resistance against authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism in the West is one of passionate struggle. Today, many who resist the rise of authoritarianism and ethnic nationalism rely primarily on the pathetic state of mind, with its aggressive spirit and demand for justice. They see it as the only viable means of combating the forces of oppression. The assumption is that only through vigilance, struggle, and confrontation can the world be changed.
This perspective, while understandable, is incomplete. Seifert’s wisdom, as presented in his Acceptance Speech, lies in recognizing the inadequacy of pathos alone. While necessary for activism, it cannot be the sole means of resistance, lest it consume those who engage in it and leave no room for what actually makes life worth living.
The lyrical state of mind offers a different, quieter form of resistance—one that refuses to allow the urgency of struggle to eclipse the beauty of everyday life. In contrast to the dramatic force of pathos, the lyrical cultivates patience, attention, and a profound affirmation of existence. Seifert understood that in times of ideological fervor, insisting on poetry, music, and the small joys of life is not a retreat but a defiant refusal to let oppression dictate the terms of reality. To inhabit the world poetically is to resist the reduction of life to mere struggle.
Authoritarian ideologies seek to dominate not only politics but also the imagination. They function by totalizing existence, demanding allegiance to a cause that allows no room for ambiguity or personal experience. In response, many resistance movements adopt the same totalizing framework, emphasizing unceasing activism and perpetual urgency. While the fight against oppression is necessary, Seifert’s perspective reminds us that genuine resistance must also protect spaces where life is not defined solely by battle.
Seifert and Whitehead: A Shared Poetic and Philosophical Vision
This interplay between the lyrical and the pathetic In Seifert parallels a distinction between Peace and Eros in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, especially as articulated in Whitehead's Adventures of Ideas.
Eros is critical in Whitehead's philosophy. It is a cosmological force in its own right and the inwardly felt urge to novelty, to newness, to what comes next. It is akin to what Seifert means by Pathos, and yet Seifert rightly adds that it includes a quest for a new and better world in light of the tragedies of the day. Whitehead would agree and yet adds, in the spirit of Seifert, that it is not enough.
Whitehead’s notion of Peace is not a passive state but an active, creative harmony—an openness to life that fosters a deep sense of connection. It includes, in Whitehead's words, a "calming of destructive turbulence" and a sense of a Harmony of Harmonies that encompasses the universe. It also includes a sense of tragedy: a "tragic beauty" that is part of the wider Harmony. Just as Seifert suggests that both the lyrical and the pathetic are necessary, Whitehead’s philosophy affirms that Peace and Eros must coexist. One without the other leads to either complacency or exhaustion.
To embody a lyrical state of mind today is to reclaim a mode of being that authoritarianism seeks to erode. It is to refuse to let ideology dictate what deserves our attention. In practical terms, this means fostering spaces where contemplation, art, and human connection can flourish. It means rejecting the false choice between engagement and joy, between activism and beauty. Instead, it affirms that to care for the world is also to care for the soul. To be sure, the pathetic mode remains essential. Without it, injustice would go unchallenged. But if we lose the lyrical, we risk mirroring the rigidity of what we oppose. Pathos alone exhausts itself; it can sustain protest, but not culture. The deepest, most enduring movements for justice have always been rooted in both modes—marches and music, defiance and poetry, urgency and repose.
Critique of Scientific Materialism
Potential connections between Seifert and Whitehead go further. Both reject what Whitehead calls "scientific materialism," the reduction of life into inert units of microscopic matter that are lifeless and valueless, perpetually colliding and being reshuffled without meaning. Whitehead proposes that no such "matter" exists and that the whole of the universe consists of momentary events which, in human life, are moments of experience. Indeed, Whitehead's proposal is that what we call energy-events in the depths of matter are what we call actual occasions of experience in human life. Nature is alive, and human life is a particularly sentient and valuable part of a larger web of life which includes the atoms and molecules, plants and other animals, stars and planets. They, too, have value.
Beauty in Occasions of Experience
Seifert’s poetry, like Whitehead’s philosophy, emphasizes the significance of concrete experience, recognizing the beauty present in ordinary life. Whitehead sees one of the primary functions of art as illuminating and celebrating the richness of experience. Experience unfolds in moments—what he calls "occasions of experience." Poetic and artistic attention to these moments, with all their felt contrasts and intensities, is not merely a subjective exercise but a profound way of engaging with reality. Beauty is not separate from experience but emerges from the concreteness, specificity, and vitality of these moments.
Beauty as a Revelation of Truth
At its best, beauty does not merely offer generalizations about the world but reveals the essences of particular experiences. This aligns with Whitehead’s understanding of how aesthetic experience can disclose deep truths about existence. Beauty, in this sense, is not just an ornament to life but a mode of revelation—a way of knowing that transcends purely rational analysis. Whitehead affirms that beauty is the one self-justifying value of human life and, indeed, of the universe itself. This suggests that beauty in everyday life is not merely an embellishment but the very heart of a meaningful existence.
The Role of Sensuality, Memory, and Imagination
Concrete experience, for Whitehead, is not limited to intellectual reflection but encompasses physical and bodily life, sensuality, memory, and imagination. Healthy nostalgia and creative reverie, both central to Seifert’s work, are likewise integral to Whitehead’s understanding of experience. He emphasizes that all experience begins in memory, or in what he calls experience in the mode of causal efficacy—our felt connection to the past and the world around us. This intertwining of sensation, recollection, and imagination suggests that beauty is not something we passively observe but something we actively participate in, shaping our perception of the world and our place within it.
There is a kind of holism at work here, but it is not the holism of collapsing parts into a greater whole. Rather, it is a holism that sees the wholes in the parts—the universe in the grain of sand, as Blake put it, or the universe in the concrescing moment of experience, as Whitehead understood it. Each occasion of experience contains within it the echoes of the past and the unfolding possibilities of the future, making every moment, however small, a microcosm of the cosmos. This perspective affirms that beauty, truth, and meaning are not reserved for grand, overarching systems but are present in the immediacy of experience itself.
All of this is to say that, in a lyrical state of mind, as described by Seifert in his acceptance speech, we find hints not only of Whitehead's themes of eros and peace but also of his event-centered, experiential, beauty-inspired metaphysic. The lyrical state of mind—a heightened awareness of beauty and experience—resonates with Whitehead’s vision of reality as a creative process, where each moment is shaped by an aesthetic pull toward intensity and harmony. In this way, Seifert’s poetic sensibility and Whitehead’s metaphysics converge, offering a way of seeing the world in which beauty is both the guiding force and the ultimate meaning of existence.
Pathos and Process
In addition, and importantly, we find resonances with Seifert's recognition of the complementary importance of pathos. Beauty, as understood by both Seifert and Whitehead, is not merely an abstract ideal but is deeply intertwined with the realities of human suffering, longing, and vulnerability. Whitehead’s philosophy does not separate beauty from the tensions and struggles of existence but sees them as integral to the creative process. In this way, Seifert’s lyrical vision acknowledges, as does Whitehead’s metaphysics, that beauty and pathos are inseparable—both shaping and deepening the meaning of human experience.
Seifert's poetic outlook resonates with Whitehead's approach in other ways as well. Both recognized that meaning is not found in static perfection but in the dynamic interplay of contrasts—of joy and sorrow, harmony and discord, presence and absence. Whitehead's process philosophy affirms that reality is not a fixed state but an ongoing act of becoming, where each moment carries within it both the weight of the past and the lure of new possibilities. Similarly, Seifert’s poetry does not seek to escape life's struggles but to reveal the beauty that emerges through them.
Transmuting Loss into Vision, Grief into Meaning
The question of meaning in life is how to bring together, how to combine, the lyrical and the pathetic, the relaxed and the restless, the contemplative and the prophetic. Seifert's acceptance speech, and Whitehead's philosophy, do not give us easy answers. But Seifert, at the end of his speech, offers the possibility that even the pathetic is part of the lyrical. He asks:
"Is the lost paradise sought by pathos not the world of lyricism? Is not poetry itself, lyrics, one of the foremost creators and interpreters of the vision of that paradise?"
This question suggests that lyricism, with its deep attunement to beauty, does not stand apart from suffering but holds it within itself, transmuting loss into vision, grief into meaning. If beauty is the self-justifying value of life, it must include not only the harmony of what is but also the longing for what is missing. In this sense, Whitehead and Seifert remind us that the search for paradise—however unattainable—is itself part of the poetic and philosophical task of living.
Hidden in our View
Beyond Tyranny and Desolation
Today, many people think of Jaroslav Seifert as the very incarnation of the Czechoslovakian poet. He represents freedom, zest and creativity and is looked upon as this generation’s bearer of the rich culture and traditions of this country. His method is to depict and praise those things in life and the other world that are not governed by dogmas and dictates, political or otherwise. Through words he paints a world other than the one various authorities and their henchmen threaten to squeeze dry and leave destitute. He praises a Prague that is blossoming and a spring that lives in the memory, in the hopes or the defiant spirit of people who refuse to conform. He praises love, and is indeed one of the truly great love-poets of our time. (...) He conjures up for us another world than that of tyranny and desolation – a world that exists both here and now, although it may be hidden from our view and bound in chains, and one that exists in our dreams and our will and our art and our indomitable spirit. His poetry is a kind of maieutics – an act of deliverance.
-Presentation Speech by Professor Lars Gyllensten, of the Swedish Academy, Translation from the Swedish text