[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 105 (Monday, July 29, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1445-E1447]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          HONORING ELI SIEGEL

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, July 26, 2002

  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a great Baltimorean 
poet, educator, and founder of Aesthetic Realism, Eli Siegel.
  Mr. Siegel was born in 1902 and grew up in Baltimore, Maryland where 
his contributions to literature and humanity began. Mr. Siegel founded 
the philosophy Aesthetic Realism in 1941, based on principles such as: 
man's deepest desire, his largest desire, is to like the world on an 
honest or accurate basis, and that the world, art, and self explain 
each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of opposites.
  Mr. Siegel explained that the deepest desire of every person is, ``to 
like the world on an honest basis.'' He gave thousands of lectures on 
the arts and sciences.
  Mr. Siegel's work continues at the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism 
Foundation in New York City, where classes, lectures, workshops, 
dramatic presentations, and poetry readings are offered. In addition, a 
teaching method, based on aesthetic realism, has been tested in New 
York City public schools. The teaching method has been tremendously 
successful. Understanding and using the teaching method may be used as 
an effective tool to stop racism and promote tolerance; because it 
enables people of all races to see others with respect and kindness.
  In 1925, Eli Siegel won the esteemed ``Nation'' Poetry Prize for 
``Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana,'' which brought him to national 
attention. ``Hot Afternoons,'' Mr. Siegel said, was affected by his 
thoughts of Druid Hill Park. And so, it is fitting that on August 16, 
2002, the city of Baltimore will dedicate the Eli Siegel Memorial at 
Druid Hill Park on a site near the Madison Avenue entrance, not far 
from his early home on Newington Avenue. The bronze memorial plague, 
designed by students of Aesthetic Realism, includes a sculptured 
portrait and poetry.
  Mayor Martin O'Malley has designated August 16, 2002 as `Eli Siegel 
Day' in Baltimore. At this time, I would like to insert the Mayor's 
proclamation and a few of Eli Siegel's poems found in the June 5, 2002 
of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation magazine for the record.
  Eli Siegel died in 1978, but his poetry and the education of 
Aesthetic Realism will be studied in every English, literature, and art 
classroom across the nation for years to come.
  I would like to end this tribute by reciting a poem Eli Siegel wrote 
honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

             Something Else Should Die: A Poem With Rhymes

                            (By Eli Siegel)

     In April 1865
     Abraham Lincoln died.
     In April 1968
     Martin Luther King died.
     Their purpose was to have us say, some day;
     Injustice died.

  Eli Siegel wrote poems for more than six decades. These poems 
expressed his thoughts on people, feelings, everyday life, love, 
nature, history. I am proud to offer this tribute.
  Thank you.

           [From Aesthetic Realism Foundation, June 5, 2002]

               The Right of Aesthetic Realism To Be Known

        baltimore represents the world--contempt causes insanity

       Dear Unknown Friends: In this issue we reprint the text of 
     a public document that is beautifully important in the 
     history of culture and justice. It is a proclamation by the 
     Mayor of Baltimore, the city in which Eli Siegel spent his 
     early years. Mr. Siegel was born on August 16, 1902, and the 
     proclamation is a formal honoring of him on his centenary: an 
     expression of pride in and gratitude for his work, by this 
     major American city. It describes truly some of Mr. Siegel's 
     greatness and the principles of the philosophy he founded, 
     Aesthetic Realism.
       The mayoral proclamation was first read publicly on April 
     28 in the Wheeler Auditorium of Baltimore's distinguished 
     Enoch Pratt Free Library. It began an event hosted by the 
     Library in partnership with the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, 
     ``The Poetry of Eli Siegel: A Centennial Celebration.''
       I and others have written much about the horrible anger Mr. 
     Siegel met from persons who resented the vastness of his 
     knowledge, the fullness of his honesty, the newness of his 
     thought. The Baltimore Proclamation stands for what is 
     natural and just: if something or someone is great--and Eli 
     Siegel is--we should rejoice.
       When a public document is mighty it is because, while 
     impersonal, it embodies the deep feelings of people, their 
     beating hearts, and the careful judgment of their minds. This 
     Proclamation does. It resounds and is warm. With its legal 
     structure, it stands, for example, for my own love of Mr. 
     Siegel, my intellectual opinion of him: it represents people 
     now and for all time.
       In honor of Baltimore as representing the world, and to 
     show something of Eli Siegel early in his life, we include 
     here two writings by him from the Baltimore American. After 
     his winning the Nation Poetry Prize in February 1925, Mr. 
     Siegel was a columnist for the American, a major newspaper of 
     the time.

[[Page E1446]]

       First, we reprint a column about the firemen of Baltimore. 
     The way of seeing people that is in it stands for who Mr. 
     Siegel was, and is central to Aesthetic Realism. Fifty years 
     later, in his Goodbye Profit System lectures of the 1970s, he 
     said with ringing clarity that the most important question 
     for America is ``What does a person deserve by being a 
     person?'' That is the big question today, in 2002: it cries 
     to be asked plainly and answered honestly. It was at the 
     basis of the kind, passionately logical thought of Eli Siegel 
     at age 22 as he wrote about Baltimore's firemen.
       In his teaching of Aesthetic Realism, Mr. Siegel showed 
     that there are two aspects to what every person deserves. He 
     was beautiful and uncompromising about people's need for 
     both, and we see both in this article: 1) Every person 
     deserves to live with dignity--deserves sufficient money, 
     just compensation for his labor, respectful working 
     conditions. And 2) a person deserves to be comprehended, his 
     thoughts and feelings understood. In Aesthetic Realism, Mr. 
     Siegel provided the means by which every person, in all our 
     dear individuality, can be understood to our very core.
       The second writing in the 1925 paper concerns a memorial 
     hall, just opened to the public in Baltimore, honoring 
     soldiers of that city who died during World War I. Under the 
     heading ``War Is Remembered,'' Mr. Siegel writes four poems 
     from the points of view of four different people, each of 
     whom sees the memorial differently. His justice to people is 
     such that their feelings come to us now; the mother of a dead 
     soldier, and an unemployed man of 1925, are immortal and 
     musical. And Mr. Siegel is the philosopher who would explain 
     at last the cause of war: the human desire for contempt.
       Humanity needs the knowledge and honesty of Eli Siegel. 
     These exist now and forever in Aesthetic Realism.
                                     --Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman
     of Aesthetic Realism
                                  ____


 Proclamation by Mayor Martin O'Malley Designating August 16, 2002 as 
                    ``Eli Siegel Day'' in Baltimore

       Whereas, the people of Baltimore are proud to join with the 
     Enoch Pratt Free Library, Congressman Elijah E. Cummings, 
     Maryland Historical Society, Coppin State College, Eubie 
     Blake National Jazz Institute, Morgan State University, 
     former Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, and others in honoring the 
     centenary of the great Baltimorean poet, philosopher, and 
     educator Eli Siegel (1902-1978), who in 1941 founded the 
     philosophy Aesthetic Realism; and
       Whereas, Eli Siegel grew up in Baltimore, and his 
     contributions to world thought began with writings completed 
     in this city, some appearing in such Baltimore publications 
     as Horizons of Johns Hopkins University, the Modern 
     Quarterly, his columns in the Baltimore American; and
       Whereas, he won the esteemed Nation Poetry Prize in 1925 
     for his ``Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana,'' which he 
     said was affected by thoughts of Druid Hill Park, and about 
     which William Carlos Williams wrote, ``I say definitely that 
     that single poem, out of a thousand others written in the 
     past quarter century, secures our place in the cultural 
     world''; and
       Whereas, the honesty, kindness, and greatness of mind Eli 
     Siegel possessed were described in the Baltimore Sun by 
     Donald Kirkley: ``Baltimore friends close to him at the time 
     [that he won the Nation prize] will testify to a certain 
     integrity and steadfastness of purpose which distinguished 
     Mr. Siegel. . . . He refused to exploit a flood of publicity. 
     . . . He wanted to investigate the whole reach of human 
     knowledge . . . to discover in its labyrinth some order or 
     system''; and
       Whereas, Eli Siegel showed that (1) the deepest desire of 
     every person is to like the world honestly, (2) humanity's 
     largest danger is contempt, ``the addition to self through 
     the lessening of something else,'' (3) ``The world, art, and 
     self explain each other: each is the aesthetic oneness of 
     opposites''; and his scholarship and historic comprehension 
     are in his books, beginning with Self and World, the classes 
     he taught which changed people's lives magnificently, his 
     thousands of lectures on the arts, sciences, and history; and
       Whereas, this education he founded, enabling people to see 
     the world and others with the respect and kindness they 
     deserve, including people of different races and 
     nationalities, is continued by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss and 
     the faculty of the not-for-profit Aesthetic Realism 
     Foundation, and is used as a Teaching Method with 
     unprecedented success by educators in public schools--we 
     salute Eli Siegel for his great contributions to knowledge 
     and humanity beginning in the City of Baltimore.
       Now, therefore, I, Martin O'Malley, Mayor of the City of 
     Baltimore, do hereby proclaim August 16, 2002 as ``Eli Siegel 
     Day'' in Baltimore, and do urge all citizens to join in this 
     celebration.
       In witness whereof, I have hereunto set the Great Seal of 
     the City of Baltimore to be affixed this twenty-eighth day of 
     April, two thousand two.
     [signed] Martin O'Malley, Mayor
                                  ____


            [From the Baltimore American, February 12, 1925]

       City Treats Fireman Unfairly, Due More Pay, Asserts Siegel

                            (By Eli Siegel)

     The talented young poet, Eli Siegel, who joined the American 
     staff this week, turned the light of his open-minded genius 
     yesterday on the lives of the Baltimore firemen. He went out 
     and discovered hitherto unrevealed duties which they perform. 
     In the following article he tells what he saw and heard and 
     what he thinks about it all.

     The fireman's life is strange and it ought to be known more; 
     the fireman's work has to be known before people can see 
     what's coming to him.
       Most people think the life of a fireman is one where he 
     fights fires, has adventures, gets in danger some of the time 
     and the rest of the time hangs around the engine house doing 
     whatever he can to make the time pass well. It isn't so. The 
     fireman may be an adventurer, a man who runs all sorts of 
     risks; but he's also a ``housewife'' or if you like 
     ``houseman.'' He cooks his meals, he makes the bed, he cleans 
     the engine house, he keeps the engine house in good order and 
     such things; the one thing he does not do which some 
     housewives do (of course not all) is launder his own clothes. 
     Yes, the fireman's life is strange; he's a cook, janitor, 
     handy man at the same time that he risks his life seeing to 
     it that fires die instead of live, and fires are terrible and 
     rude things; they don't mind if men never put them out.
       The fireman has his time off, but who wants time off if you 
     can't get out of the place you work in? The fireman's time is 
     measured by periods of eight days, not a week. In these eight 
     days he's supposed to be on duty at least ninety-six hours; 
     in other words, he works ninety-six hours out of one hundred 
     ninety-two. He now works under the double-platoon system: 
     three days of the eight he works ten hours a day; three 
     nights he works fourteen hours; and then for one day he works 
     the whole twenty-four hours, leaving him one day, or twenty-
     four hours to be free. At any time he's on duty he may be 
     called on to fight some fire, and fighting fires is a risky 
     thing. Insurance companies are pretty slow in giving 
     insurance to firemen. Then he is on the watch, every man of 
     the force in the engine house, from one to two hours a day. 
     So although the fireman's life may be romantic, it's work all 
     right, too, and work isn't romantic at all.
       The fireman has a lot of annoyances. While sleeping he may 
     be awakened at any time by the ringing of the gong, for an 
     alarm is heard in more than one engine house at one time. 
     When the gong rings, out of bed he gets and slides down a 
     pole; and if you saw that pole you't think it a dangerous 
     thing to slide down on the middle of the night just after you 
     have awakened. When a fireman sleeps he doesn't know what may 
     happen next; he can't say, as many people do when they go to 
     bed, ``Well, nothing to worry about until tomorrow.'' Morning 
     and night don't mean much to a fireman.
       The fireman gets $1500 a year, $125 a month, about $30 a 
     week. A fireman gets married and has a family; these families 
     live on $30 a week. That is, they have to live on it.
       The fireman needs to be paid much more; no getting away 
     from that. The city could pay it if it stopped doing fool 
     business and hurtful business in paying big sums to officials 
     who have high sounding titles, but don't do anything much in 
     the way of useful work. The fireman is a man it pays to keep 
     contented; and when a man can support himself and his family 
     without worrying greatly doing it, he can be contended; but 
     $30 a week won't do it, and ought not to do it. Every 
     fireman, when approached by me, seemed to think he was dealt 
     with unjustly by the city. He is willing to do his job well, 
     but he feels he could do it better if he didn't have to worry 
     about making a living.
       . . . If a fire keeps on after working hours, of course he 
     works on. He gets a pension more than likely if he's injured, 
     and his wife gets one if he's killed; but a sound uncripled 
     body is worth many, many pensions. Pensions are 
     unsatisfactory things when one gives a leg, or one's eyesight 
     or one's health or life in exchange. And anyone may see, who 
     reads the newspapers, that very often a company of firemen go 
     out to fight a fire and don't come back the way they went 
     out.
       There are now about 1500 men in the Fire Department of 
     Baltimore City. These men are doing the city a public service 
     as great as any. They fight fires, but they do many other 
     things. There's much injustice in this world; and there's 
     very much injustice that politicians or men who govern 
     cities, states and nations do. Of this injustice the fireman 
     get their share. Since justice is a good thing (as most 
     people say), the firemen's lives need to be understood better 
     and their services paid for better both in the way of 
     honoring them and giving them more money.
                                  ____


              [From the Baltimore American, April 5, 1925]

                    War Is Remembered By Eli Siegel

   1. A mother who lost her son in the war sees the War Memorial Hall

     He is in his grave
     Which I have never seen
     And I am here,
     In this great building that looks so well.
     His grave must be small, and people
     I'm sure never look at it.
     Look at that great man make a speech;
     He's talking about my son, in this way.
     I like the looks of this place,
     But I'd rather see Tom's grave.
     And, Oh, God, I'd like to see him.

                 2. A seventeen-year-old girl sees it.

     Say, Ed, it sure looks good, doesn't it?
     I've seen men working on it days and days, when I used to 
           ride by on the car.

[[Page E1447]]

     I'll have to tell Lucy about it, you know, that New York 
           girl,
     Who thinks she's much, just because she comes from the big 
           town.
     We can't get in, can we?
     I wish we could.
     What will this place be for?
     Well, Lucy will hear of this place,
     I tell you.
     She'll know she doesn't see everything just because she's in 
           New York.
     Say, Ed, what's that woman crying about anyway?
     Oh, yes. I guess you're right; she must have lost her son in 
           the war.

                    3. A sonneteering poet sees it.

     This, our great house of stone, is for our war's dead,
     Our dead; they died away from us; far away
     In France, they, fighting, died. There, this very day,
     Their bodies lie. Yet, let it not be said,
     Ever, that mem'ry of their dying has now fled.
     This white, great house is for them, and O, may
     It serve their cause well and long. It is they
     Who made, own it. And so, let us dread
     Our miscue of their dying. Let this, our hall,
     This hall so noble with its cool, white stone,
     Bring to our minds that wars may, yet may, be.
     Let not men by millions in grief and death atone
     For our uncaring and unknowing. Let us all
     Know war, hate war. This is our dead men's plea.

            4. One of the jobless warriors of once sees it.

     This place is swell, no getting away from that,
     The walls so white and tall and clean.
     The place is so big, I'd be scared to sleep in it.
     I guess May and I will be moving soon,
     Whether we like it or not.
     Our three rooms could get in a corner of this,
     And the plaster is falling off in places.
     But they were pretty comfortable.
     I was in one of those French places mentioned on the wall,
     And I was glad to get back.
     Now I'm not so glad.
     I wish I could live in a place I'd like and could pay for.
     Those three rooms of ours aren't anything fancy at all,
     But they cost too much for me now,
     Who isn't working.
     It's all right for people to have this hall, to remember the 
           way by,
     But I wish they'd remember all about it.

     

                          ____________________