Thinking about Winnie the Pooh thinking

Even when reading through Winnie the Pooh and House at Pooh Corner with an eye for narrative levels and metalepsis, one can’t help Noticing Things (things like Milne’s proclivity for nonstandard capitalizations, for instance).  It’s been awhile since I spent significant time with Pooh, so a lot of these discoveries are hitting me for the first time.  I wish I had time to focus academic work on everything; however, here are a couple of interesting things about Pooh that I won’t be covering in my narrative theory paper:

1. There’s a major emphasis on literacy and intellectual prestige.  None of the characters is fully literate, but those who have even a shred of reading and writing ability flaunt it extravagantly.  Pooh–who frequently misspeaks–refers to “messages” as “missages,” a particularly apt malapropism given that his ability to interpret language ends with recognizing the letter “P” and equating it with “Pooh,” leading him to miss the point of many written communications completely.  Despite the fact that all the animals are in more or less the same boat when it comes to lack of literacy skills, there also seems to be a serious shame attending illiteracy.  Lying and evasion is preferable to frank admission that one can’t read.  This focus on literacy is closely aligned with the repeated attention to who has a brain and who has just fluff between his ears.  Having a brain is considered a prerequisite for intelligence and authority, and Pooh is repeatedly referred to as a “bear of very little brain” or “bear of no brain at all.”  Yet, (and this brings me to point 2), Pooh is responsible for the vast majority of artistic creation that takes place over the course of the books.
2. There’s also quite a bit of commentary about the artistic process.  After eating and spending time with his friends, composing poetry seems to be Pooh’s primary pastime.  Few chapters go by without a “hum” or two of the bear’s own creation.  And, while his poetry uses nonsense words and is often somewhat simplistic, Pooh is not a naïve artist.  He is self-conscious and seems to have a philosophy of composition.  One telling example is when he promises to write a poem about Piglet’s bravery when Owl’s house is blown over and Pooh and Owl require a rescue.  Several days have passed since the event, and Piglet is growing impatient, so Pooh returns to the site of the disaster to wait for inspiration.  “But it isn’t easy…because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you.  And all you can do is go where they can find you,” he reflects.  “I shall begin with ‘Here lies a tree’ because it does, and then I’ll see what happens.”  After composing a seven-stanza poem with a fairly complex rhyme scheme, Pooh reflects again: “It’s come different from what I thought it would, but it’s come.”  Later, when Piglet questions his own heroism, Pooh says, “in poetry–in a piece of poetry–well, you did it, Piglet, because the poetry says you did.  And that’s how people know.”  This statement is almost an echo of Hayden White on history–the historiographer’s composed account of history validates and constructs the past as we know it, just as Pooh’s poem validates and constructs Piglet’s bravery.  This sense of Pooh as philosopher and poet is almost nonexistent in film versions of the stories, retained only in  the characteristic pose of a head-scratching Pooh muttering “think, think, think.” 

It is largely (for me) this image of such an intense, physical, earnest attempt to think deep thoughts that makes Pooh so endearing.  That and his unabashed desire for food.  I like to think that if I had to pick a literary character who’s most like me it would be someone badass, beautiful, and brilliant (a la Elizabeth Bennet), but, honestly speaking, it’s probably that good-natured, bewildered, rotund, fluff-filled philosopher-poet-of-very-little-brain, Pooh.