Creative Conformity

Ever wonder why most current poetry is written in free verse, instead of embracing traditional schemes of rhyme, meter, and structure? It certainly cannot have anything to do with the greater difficulty of writing poetry in standardized forms, and the inexorability of progress most definitely implies that the arts are more aesthetically advanced now than they were a few centuries ago. Anyway, sonnets are archaic, and who wants to bother with end rhyme or trochaic feet? Art is about self-expression, not artificial limitations on creativity.

Right. And the life of individuals is also about free expression, about "being yourself," "becoming who you are." (Speaking of progress, does it ever occur to anyone that popularized existentialism is so 1950s?) "Follow your dreams." These flippancies, which never really meant much of anything, have so completely entered the American public consciousness that it is nearly impossible to evade them. Even in the church, where one would hope that the very grouping together of worshipers would give everyone a clue that it's not primarily about exploring individual fulfillment, we're just a gathering of disparate persons trying to see "what we can get out of it" as individuals. Group-think, far from being the national danger which the New York Times' Op-Ed page seems to consider it, is something which Americans haven't been able to do for generations.

If Christians are to reject pop-existentialist individualism, what model can replace the current one of individual fulfillment? My recommendation is a model of "creative conformity," and I would proffer the Elizabethan sonnet as my analogue.

A sonnet is a verse form consisting of 14 lines, which are arranged within a fixed rhyme scheme. An Elizabethan (or Shakespearean) sonnet is made up of three quatrains (stanzas of four lines each) and a couplet (two concluding lines). The rhyme pattern is abab cdcd efef gg, and the feet are iambic (da DA) in pentameter (five-foot lines). While I am sorely tempted to allegorize each aspect of the Elizabethan sonnet for our mutual edification, I will leave that to the Middle Ages and evangelical preachers. Instead, I would like to suggest that the sonnet, with its rigid form but limitless possiblilities for structured creativity, can show us how to be individual, corporate, original, pious, and orthodox, all at the same time.

Okay, well maybe that's a bit ambitious, but it does seem to me that this verse form demonstrates that antecedent structure does not inhibit creativity, but rather enhances it. Multitudes of sonnets were written between the 13th century and the 18th, and they continue to be written today-except that now everyone ignores the poets who write them. Some of the greatest poetry in the English language is written in sonnet form, Shakespeare's sonnets being Exhibit A. Translate Shakespeare's sonnets into free verse, and they lose much of their beauty: the form complements the content.

Analogously, the Siamese twins of orthodoxy and orthopraxy paint clearly drawn lines for the Christian's thinking and acting. Far from inhibiting his personal expression, though, these parameters deepen the significance of his individual creativity. They do this by the obvious characteristic of providing context for his life and thoughts. An authoritative tradition spins a web of meaning which provides a referent for the individual; without this web, the individual becomes one of Democritus' atoms, falling through the void. The boundaries of the web also provide a standard for evaluating the quality of a person's life and activity: a bad sonnet might include anapestic and dactylic feet that disrupt the poem and distract from its meaning, but a prose poem can include whatever feet may seem felicitous at the moment. Finally, the rigid rules of the sonnet make it quite apparent when one has been faithful to the form, while leaving room for occasional excellence within the same form.

The orthodox life is not a prose poem, but neither is it a tax form. Creative conformity, like the sonnet, can allow real, coherent significance while highlighting individual contributions as well. But here's my favorite part: the immutability of the sonnet's structure extends a ladder into the abyss of the individual's isolation, uniting the subject and the Other without destroying the distinction between them.