Tea
and
Philosophy
by
Gerald Somerville
with the assistance of
the Gorbals Initiative
Contents
Introduction
More than twenty five years ago I wrote a short science fiction story
for a student magazine. The editor did
not publish it but I subsequently pared it down so much that someone declared
it to be no longer a short story but a poem.
I knew that poems did not have to rhyme, but it took a little persuasion
for me to accept that a poem did not even have to scan, that what counted was
that the formal structure – in this case grammar, visual layout and punctuation
rather than sound - was nearly as important as the explicit content.
I am going to begin by analysing this poem and end with a philosophical
interpretation, using some illustrations on the way. The purpose of the interpretation is not so much to understand
the poem but to understand certain ideas which I was struggling to express when
I wrote the poem, and for which the poem is a kind of metaphor.
A Storm in a Tea-Cup
Once upon a time there was a cup of tea freshly poured.
On the surface of the tea there were some bubbles,
On top of a bubble stood a man,
And in his hand was a cup of tea.
So protective of his cup of tea was he,
That when the ocean of tea below him shook,
He fell, rather than let his tea be spilled.
For in this tiny man’s tiny cup of tea,
There is an even tinier, drowning man,
Whose cup unspilt beneath the ocean sinks,
So that all the teas are one –
And there will be an infinity of tea.
Analysis of the Structure
A Storm in a Tea-Cup
Cup Sinks Unspilt Present Action Cup of Tea The scene set Infinity of tea Future Resolution
Once upon a time … (Mythic beginning) So protective … (Narrative) He fell, … (End of story)
Once upon a time There was a cup of tea, Freshly poured. On top of the tea… On top of a bubble … And in his hand ...
The chart above shows a part of the
hierarchy of divisions of the poem. At
the top we have the whole poem, and on the next level its division into three
parts. The next level down shows a
division of that first part into three.
Each subsequent level, as we go down the chart, shows the division into
three of the first part of the previous level.
These repeated divisions into three follow from a mapping of the whole
poem into the first part of itself, as shown by the broken arrows in the chart.
To illustrate this point, the following two long rectangles both represent the whole poem, and the various arrows show how the divisions are mapped from the whole of the poem into the first part of itself. The divisions (and arrows) have been marked according to their position in the hierarchy of divisions.
This mapping then suggests a further division of that first part of the first part of the poem. Indeed we should be able to repeatedly divide in this way, each time dividing into three the first part of the previous division. However, for this really to be so, the poem would have to be infinite in length. In composing the poem, I have had to be content with suggesting this possibility through the style of writing and how it progresses from abrupt to smooth, from staccato to melody through the poem.
The Flow of the Narrative
The analysis breaks up the poem, but the hierarchy of divisions shows that we cannot understand the poem purely by breaking it into parts, since this would provide no way of explaining how one division could be more important than another. I have talked of the whole poem being mapped into the first part of itself, so one can think of the finer divisions like reverberating echoes of the main division of the whole poem. But clearly we need to take account of how the first (main) part is connected, as well as having something to say about the other two main parts.
Calling ‘A Storm in a Tea-Cup’ a poem is justified because its structure is so important to its content, and so we cannot analyse that structure very much without also dealing with its content.
The poem begins by zooming in on a cup of tea until we find another cup of tea being held by a tiny man falling off a bubble on the surface of the tea. As far as the poem is concerned, the whole world is the first cup. The second cup is a tiny object inside the first cup. And yet the two cups are one. Whatever happens to the second cup will happen to the first cup. This is why the man was so protective of his cup (the second cup) of tea.
The picture ‘Print Gallery’ by M. C. Escher may help to explain this. On the right side of the picture we see a small town and the entrance of the building immediately in front of us. If we move our eyes to the left, looking at the lower part of the picture, we see that the building we are in front of is a picture gallery, and we can see, through a window, a man with his back to us looking at one of the pictures. If we start again by looking on the right side of the picture and move our eyes to left, but this time keeping to the upper part of the picture, we see that what we took to be a town was only a picture of a town – that we have been looking at a picture of a picture of a town. In fact, if we make a complete cycle looking clockwise round the picture, we find that we are looking at a picture of a picture of a picture of a … - an infinite loop.
I am suggesting a parallel between Escher’s picture and the poem. The whole picture is the first cup of tea, and what we see, within the picture, as framed and hanging in a gallery is the second cup of tea. Because of the way our eyes naturally connect up the picture and interpret it, we automatically identify what I am here distinguishing – the whole picture and what appears as hanging in a gallery. Escher’s picture then challenges this natural way of interpreting a picture, although he cannot do so without distortions and he cannot fill in the centre part – the picture is necessarily incomplete. In comparison, the poem is worse in that there is no such natural inclination to take the two cups of tea to be one. The poem does, however, manage to give the appearance of completeness. (Note, however, that the beginning of the poem failed to be infinitely divided.)
I have already mentioned in the analysis of the structure of the poem that there is a mapping of the whole poem into the first part of itself. In the content too we have a mapping of the whole, the first cup, into a part of itself, the second cup. This is an example of how structure and content reflect one another.
The Print Gallery
By Mauritz C Escher
What the Storm is
Over the years I have shown the poem to many people, and only once have I got any response to the poem, either to ask questions about it or tell me what it suggests to them. The one person who did make a response went mad and was put into a psychiatric hospital less than a fortnight later, though I don’t think the poem was the cause. In an attempt to get people to open up I have often asked the question, “Why did the bubble shake?” However, I have always had to supply the answer myself. I shall now do the same here.
Just as the second cup is the same cup as the first, so also the third cup, the one held by the tinier (second) man, is the same cup – and the two men are the same man too. Thus the bubble shakes because another tea is flowing over the sides of the cup and joining with the tea in it, inevitably disturbing the surface of the tea on which the bubble sits. The bubble may even pop – it will certainly be very difficult for the man to stay on the bubble.
The man would eventually fall off the bubble anyway – even supposing the man could have a stable foothold standing on the bubble, all the bubbles will eventually pop anyway. (The bubbles you get from pouring tea from a height are much less stable – because bigger – than you get from, say, a cup of instant coffee.)
But the man anticipates falling into the ocean of tea, just as the poem indicates. Note that I am using the word ‘anticipates’ here in its original meaning, not merely ‘believes in advance’, but also ‘participates in bringing about’. The falling into the ocean was beyond his control, but the manner and timing of his fall were under his control.
The above five pictures show the action viewed as a cross section. The downward arrow marks the bubble on which the man stood – the man is too small to show and is already drowned in the last picture. The cup itself is shown turquoise.
The Uni-Tea*
There was no natural inclination to regard the cups as being the same cup. With regard to the teas, however, this is a little easier. We have two seemingly separate teas which are then blended together, but we can only distinguish them in so far as they are physically separated from one another. They are not two distinct kinds of liquid and so, when they are blended together, we are not blending two different ingredients to get a compound or mixture. It is all the same tea. (I am assuming complete homogeneity of the teas before and after.)
Notice that it is the same tea before and after in time as well as the same tea that was separated in space – in the last few moments separated only by the cup. Because of this, I have never been settled in my mind with regard to one word in the last line of the poem. The version I have given here has ‘infinity’ where I have sometimes put ‘eternity’.
Philosophic Interpretation
So far I have discussed the poem as if it was about a self-contained world of its own – about a fictional world very different physically from our own in which, for instance, a man might stand on a bubble of tea. I have even mentioned its apparent completeness in contrast with Escher’s picture ‘Print Gallery’. But, like that picture, it does not truly present a world that contains itself – its world contains itself only metaphorically. The world it depicts is not truly contained in a cup, but in the poem itself. I don’t know whether Escher’s picture actually hangs in a print gallery, but even if it does, I am certain that that print gallery is not as it is depicted in his picture.
The world depicted by the poem only exists as depicted by the poem. There may be other people standing on other bubbles in the same cup of tea. These other people may also be holding cups of tea. Some may even be holding cups of instant coffee, where there are likely to be many more, though smaller, bubbles. (It may be easier to stand on a group of small bubbles than a lone large one.) Such possibilities are not ruled out by the poem, but neither are they ruled in. Such matters are undetermined, because the poem has left them so. All that we can say about such matters is that the man mentioned would be able to discern the truth of such matters if he chose by looking into his cup of tea. Likewise, we can only discern the truth of such matters by reference to the poem, and I chose, when composing the poem, to leave them undetermined. (In very early versions I mentioned that there were people on some of the other bubbles holding their own cups.)
Thus, the second cup mentioned in the poem is “really”, so to speak, the poem itself. The first cup contains the world depicted by the poem, and everything it contains, or happens in it, is contained, or happens in, the poem, just as it is said that everything the first cup contains, or happens in, the first cup is contained, or happens in, the second cup. When we talk of the poem’s contents, we are using a general form of the metaphor of a cup and its contents, and yet there is a sense in which the world depicted by the poem is truly the poem’s content – by definition, one might say – while it is the second cup’s content only as a supposition within the poem – a flight of fancy, as when we generate or understand a metaphor.
Once, however, we begin to recognize the second cup as a metaphor for the poem itself, the world depicted by the poem is blown wide open and even the foundations of that metaphor begin to shake (metaphorically). The poem exists in a world very different from the one depicted in it. Not only is the second cup a metaphor for the poem itself, but also the first and second cups are no longer the same cup, the two teas do not really meet, they are merely linked by one being a metaphor for the other. The second cup can no longer simply be a metaphor for the poem, but something which includes discussion of the metaphor itself, so that we can still say that the teas really meet – though tea is itself explicitly taken as a metaphor for something else. Hence we might include this discussion of the poem, but we cannot stop there.
A philosophic interpretation now emerges as we try to “realize” the metaphor. I will briefly sketch one here. The first cup becomes a theory of everything, and the second cup becomes an exposition of that theory. Philosophy itself is, at least implicitly, the project of expounding that theory, of completing that exposition – it is what that man does in the poem.
Conclusion
I realize that much of what I have written may seem puzzling and bizarre, but I hope that the reader has understood enough of it to find it interesting, interesting enough to want to ask me questions about it.
Let me suggest the following question for starters:
Why was it so important that the tea should flow into the cup, but never out of it?