Are Knowledge and Art Opposed?
On Mary Ruefle and Kabbalah
The poet Mary Ruefle writes, “My allegiance to poetry, to art, is greater than my allegiance to knowledge and intelligence.”
Do you think art and knowledge are opposed? Do you have an allegiance to one over the other? What does it mean to pledge allegiance to art or knowledge, in the first place?
Ruefle’s statement at seems to capture everything that is both wonderful and terrible about art—it is something other than knowledge. No wonder many say they “simply don’t get poetry.” There is nothing to get. I don’t quite buy this, though. I think good art is a kind of knowledge, if a knowledge by other means; and the best ideas are artful, poetic.
In Kabbalah, there are three different words for knowledge—chochma (wisdom), bina (insight, intuition), and daat (knowledge). Could Ruefle be saying that she prefers bina, intuitive understanding, to the other divine attributes? But in Kabbalah, these energy-centers/divine attributes (sefirot) are interdependent and fractal. Each contains the others.
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