Where are the Competent Romantics?

Magic and Normalcy Belong Together

A year ago, I asked “Where are today’s warrior poets?” I’m pleased to say that since asking that question I’ve been finding them. Peter Cole is one such person. He’s a poet and translator whose faith in his project can move mountains. He is not a literal warrior, but he translates medieval poets who were, and he is fighting “a war for the imagination.”

I’m delighted to share my conversation with him in celebration of his new book, Draw Me After, which is a meditation on the Hebrew Letters.

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A variation on the question of warrior poets is the question “Where are the competent romantics?” We find many who can execute but lack vision. And we find many whose vision is so great as to be derailing or lacking in rigor. In companies, especially large ones, you find that most employees want to get their jobs done and don’t want to take risks. But risk-taking is where the romance is. The solution historically has been a separation of labor. Bohemian artists have lived outside the confines of the PMC (Professional Managerial Class) or at least projected an image of being uncaptured (Thoreau lived out of his mom’s house and could only write Walden because he was getting “tendies”), while “practical” consultant-type folk have eschewed the arts and inspiration, at least in their day jobs, as outside the realm of what’s needed: the bottom line.

But Abraham and Moses and Socrates and Lao Tzu and Shmuel HaNagid and the Wright Brothers and Gandhi and Herzl and many, many folk throughout history show us that vision and execution can be mutually inclusive—it’s possible to be a poet and an acknowledged legislator of the world. It’s possible to be a statesman or a courtier and a religious soul. It’s possible to love truth and also build a school. Still, we find that Moses basically spends his life complaining about the people he has to lead—his own liberator spirit stands in contrast to the desire of his company who often claim to prefer Egypt to the unknown. Human nature seems to know romance at the individual level, but usually points to safetyism at the collective level. It is in the nature of bureaucracy to become de-risked and de-romanticized. It is in the nature of founders and poets to seek the new, fallout be damned.

The solution of division of labor is one way to deal with this tension, but another way is to create hybridity within people, such that we promote small-mindedness among the fantastical folk and and expansiveness among the foot-soldiers. The people need more imagination. The poets need more tachlis, and also more empathy with the small-mindedness of hoi polloi. I’m painting in big strokes here, but the social problem of how you integrate competence and romance is also an existential problem for each of us.

Now, psychologists who promote “The Big Five” personality test might rejoin that we shouldn’t try to make accountants entrepreneurs or vice versa. Let the agreeable rule followers be agreeable rule followers and the counter-cultural musicians be counter-cultural musicians. Fair enough. But also, no. Psychology is too descriptive. Normatively, we need balance—harmony means the romantics must learn competence and the competent must learn romanticism.

Careful artistic practice may be one way to begin bridging the gap between the magical and the normal.