Truth and Metaphysical Aesthetics in A.J.M. Smith's Selected Poems
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Arthur James Marshall Smith, (1902-1980), a Canadian poet, critic, and professor who played a vital role in shaping the modern Canadian literary landscape, is known for his preoccupation with metaphysical aesthetics and truth that revolve around exploring deep philosophical themes. Through his keen observation and meticulous craftsmanship, Smith quests for unconcealing the potential truth and inherent beauty beneath the surface of human existence and the universe. Doing so, Smith explores the relationship between external beauty and intrinsic hidden truth that may transcend human understanding. His main concern is to reveal truths behind themes, notions, and the physical world rendered in a unique philosophical voice. Metaphysical aesthetics is the creativity of philosophical inquiries and debates of concepts where the vocalization of philosophical ideas wields poetic language and creative artwork. The present paper aims to examine the metaphysical and philosophical aesthetics in Smith’s selected poems and essays, arguing that there is a whole aesthetic realm behind the poet’s philosophical voice. This very realm reveals a tension between the endeavor to be hermeneutic to uncover the most fundamental metaphysical dimensions of human existence and harnessing unique aesthetic elements simultaneously. Employing Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power and Heidegger’s surrealistic outlook, this paper addresses Smith’s poetics of philosophy that deals with themes such as death unity, transcendence, the dynamics of spiritual transition, and the ideal nationality. Smith drags the reader’s attention to speculate the wonders of existence, the power of the mind, its interconnectedness with the cosmic essence, and the poetics of truth.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.018 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".