A Reading of Alexander Pope's Epistle to Burlington

Abstract

Reading Alexander Pope (1688-1744) is always difficult and challenging. As in the case of most poets, there will be various ways to approach him. In this paper, as a personal effort to understand Pope, I have extended my frame of reference as far as possible to examine him from a vantage point which we now command. And I have found that the American architectural critic Lewis Mumford's (1895-) insight into the nature of a "healthy art," i.e., reconciliation between functional considerations and aesthetic effect, provides a good starting-point for the discussion of Pope's Epistle to Burlington (1731). In Art and Technics Mumford emphasizes the importance of the humanization of technique as an essential condition for a meaningful life. Unlike many other art critics, he is not possessed by the illusion that art will provide the most valid answer to questions about life or that art is after all useless. He recognizes that the desire for art and the desire for technique are intrinsic in human life and that the negation of either one will inevitably impoverish human life. Mumford's brilliant comment on the Secretariat Building of the United Nations is quite illuminating at this point. "That great oblong prism of steel and aluminum and glass, less a building than a gigantic mirror in which the urban landscape of Manhattan is reflected, is in one sense one of the most perfect achievements of modern technics."