Extraordinary claims have often been made for poetry--Matthew Arnold’s
words quoted at the head of this essay are an example--claims which
very many people are inclined to view with astonishment or with
the smile which tolerance gives to the enthusiast. Indeed a more
representative modern view would be that the future of poetry is
_nil_. Peacock’s conclusion in his _The Four Ages of Poetry_ finds a
more general acceptance. “A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a
civilized community. He lives in the days that are past ... In whatever
degree poetry is cultivated, it must necessarily be to the neglect of
some branch of useful study: and it is a lamentable thing to see minds,
capable of better things, running to seed in the specious indolence of
these empty aimless mockeries of intellectual exertion. Poetry was the
mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy
of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious
business of the playthings of its childhood, is as absurd as for a
grown man to rub his gums with coral, and cry to be charmed asleep by
the jingle of silver bells.” And with more regret many others--Keats
was among them--have thought that the inevitable effect of the advance
of science would be to destroy the possibility of poetry.
What is the truth in this matter? How is our estimate of poetry going
to be affected by science? And how will poetry itself be influenced?
The extreme importance which has in the past been assigned to poetry
is a fact which must be accounted for whether we conclude that it was
rightly assigned or not, and whether we consider that poetry will
continue to be held in such esteem or not. It indicates that the case
for poetry, whether right or wrong, is one which turns on momentous
issues. We shall not have dealt adequately with it unless we have
raised questions of great significance.
Very much toil has gone to the endeavour to explain the high place
of poetry in human affairs, with, on the whole, few satisfactory or
convincing results. This is not surprising. For in order to show how
poetry is important it is first necessary to discover to some extent
what it is. Until recently this preliminary task could only be very
incompletely carried out; the psychology of instinct and emotion was
too little advanced; and, moreover, the wild speculations natural
in pre-scientific enquiry definitely stood in the way. Neither the
professional psychologist, whose interest in poetry is frequently not
intense, nor the man of letters, who as a rule has no adequate ideas
of the mind as a whole, has been equipped for the investigation. Both
a passionate knowledge of poetry and a capacity for dispassionate
psychological analysis are required if it is to be satisfactorily
prosecuted.
It will be best to begin by asking ‘What _kind of a thing_, in the
widest sense, is poetry?’ When we have answered this we shall be ready
to ask ‘How can we use and misuse it?’ and ‘What reasons are there for
thinking it valuable?’
Let us take an experience, ten minutes of a person’s life, and describe
it in broad outline. It is now possible to indicate its general
structure, to point out what is important in it, what trivial and
accessory, which features depend upon which, how it has arisen, and how
it is probably going to influence his future experience. There are, of
course, wide gaps in this description, none the less it _is_ at last
possible to understand in general how the mind works in an experience,
and what sort of stream of events the experience is.
A poem, let us say Wordsworth’s _Westminster Bridge_ sonnet, is such
an experience, it is the experience the right kind of reader has when
he peruses the verses. And the first step to an understanding of the
place and future of poetry in human affairs is to see what the general
structure of such an experience is. Let us begin by reading it very
slowly, preferably aloud, giving every syllable time to make its full
effect upon us. And let us read it experimentally, repeating it,
varying our tone of voice until we are satisfied that we have caught
its rhythm as well as we are able, and--whether our reading is such as
to please other people or not--we ourselves at least are certain how it
should ‘go.’
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning: silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open to the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour valley, rock or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at its own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
We may best make our analysis of the experience that arises through
reading these lines from the surface inwards, to speak metaphorically.
The surface is the impression of the printed words on the retina. This
sets up an agitation which we must follow as it goes deeper and deeper.
The first things to occur (if they do not, the rest of the experience
will be gravely inadequate) are the sound of the words ‘in the mind’s
ear’ and the feel of the words imaginarily spoken.[1] These together
give the _full body_, as it were, to the words, and it is with the
full bodies of words that the poet works, not with their printed
signs. But many people lose nearly everything in poetry through these
indispensable parts escaping them.
Next arise various pictures ‘in the mind’s eye’; not of words but
of things for which the words stand; perhaps of ships, perhaps of
hills; and together with them, it may be, other images of various
sorts. Images of what it feels like to stand leaning on the parapet of
Westminster Bridge. Perhaps that odd thing, an image of ‘silence.’ But,
unlike the image-bodies of the words themselves, those other images of
things are not vitally important. Those who have them may very well
think them indispensable, and _for them_ they may be necessary; but
other people may not require them at all. This is a point at which
differences between individual minds are very marked.
Thence onwards the agitation which is the experience divides into a
major and a minor branch, though the two streams have innumerable
interconnections and influence one another intimately. Indeed it is
only as an expositor’s artifice that we may speak of them as two
streams.
The minor branch we may call the intellectual stream; the other, which
we may call the active, or emotional, stream, is made up of the play of
our interests.
The intellectual stream is fairly easy to follow; it follows itself, so
to speak; but it is the less important of the two. In poetry it matters
only _as a means_; it directs and excites the active stream. It is made
up of thoughts, which are not static little entities that bob up into
consciousness and down again out of it, but fluent happenings, events,
which reflect or point to the things the thoughts are ‘of.’ Exactly how
they do this is a matter which is still much disputed.
This pointing to or reflecting things is all that thoughts do. They
appear to do much more; which is our chief illusion. The realm of
thought is never a sovereign state. Our thoughts are the servants of
our interests, and even when they seem to rebel it is usually our
interests that are in disorder. Our thoughts are pointers and it is the
other, the active, stream which deals with the things which thoughts
reflect or point to.
Some people who read verse (they do not often read much of it), are so
constituted that very little more happens than this intellectual stream
of thoughts. It is perhaps superfluous to point out that they miss the
real poem. To exaggerate this part of the experience, and give it too
much importance on its own account, is a notable current tendency, and
for many people explains why they do not read poetry.
The active branch is what really matters; for from it all the energy
of the whole agitation comes. The thinking which goes on is somewhat
like the play of an ingenious and invaluable ‘governor’ run by but
controlling the main machine. Every experience is essentially some
interest or group of interests swinging back to rest.
To understand what an interest is we should picture the mind as a
system of very delicately poised balances, a system which so long as
we are in health is constantly growing. Every situation we come into
disturbs some of these balances to some degree. The ways in which they
swing back to a new equipoise are the impulses with which we respond
to the situation. And the chief balances in the system are our chief
interests.
Suppose that we carry a magnetic compass about in the neighbourhood
of powerful magnets. The needle waggles as we move and comes to rest
pointing in a new direction whenever we stand still in a new position.
Suppose that instead of a single compass we carry an arrangement of
many magnetic needles, large and small, swung so that they influence
one another, some able only to swing horizontally, others vertically,
others hung freely. As we move, the perturbations in this system will
be very complicated. But for every position in which we place it there
will be a final position of rest for all the needles into which they
will in the end settle down, a general poise for the whole system. But
even a slight displacement may set the whole assemblage of needles
busily readjusting themselves.
One further complication. Suppose that while all the needles influence
one another, some of them respond only to some of the outer magnets
among which the system is moving. The reader can easily draw a diagram
if his imagination needs a visual support.
The mind is not unlike such a system if we imagine it to be incredibly
complex. The needles are our interests, varying in their importance,
that is in the degree to which any movement they make involves
movement in the other needles. Each new disequilibrium, which a shift
of position, a fresh situation, entails, corresponds to a need; and
the wagglings which ensue as the system rearranges itself are our
responses, the impulses through which we seek to meet the need. Often
the new poise is not found until long after the original disturbance.
Thus states of strain can arise which last for years.
The child comes into the world as a comparatively simple arrangement.
Few things affect him, comparatively speaking, and his responses also
are few and simple, but he very quickly becomes more complicated. His
recurrent needs for food and for various attentions are constantly
setting all his needles swinging. Little by little separate needs
become departmentalized as it were, sub-systems are formed; hunger
causes one set of responses, the sight of his toys another, loud
noises yet another, and so on. But the sub-systems never become quite
independent. So he grows up, becoming susceptible to ever more numerous
and more delicate influences.
He grows more discriminating in some respects, he is thrown out of
equilibrium by slighter differences in his situation. In other respects
he becomes more stable. From time to time, through growth, fresh
interests develop, sex is the outstanding example. His needs increase,
he becomes capable of being upset by quite new causes, he becomes
responsive to quite new aspects of the situation.
This development takes a very indirect course. It would be still more
erratic if society did not mould and remould him at every stage,
reorganising him incompletely two or three times over before he grows
up. He reaches maturity in the form of a vast assemblage of major and
minor interests, partly a chaos, partly a system, with some tracts of
his personality fully developed and free to respond, others tangled and
jammed in all kinds of accidental ways. It is this incredibly complex
assemblage of interests to which the printed poem has to appeal.
Sometimes the poem is itself the influence which disturbs us, sometimes
it is merely the means by which an already existing disturbance can
right itself. More usually perhaps it is both at once.
We must picture then the stream of the poetic experience as the
swinging back into equilibrium of these disturbed interests. We are
reading the poem in the first place only because we are in some way
interested in doing so, only because some interest is attempting to
regain its poise thereby. And whatever happens as we read happens only
for a similar reason. We understand the words (the intellectual branch
of the stream goes on its way successfully) only because an interest
is reacting through that means, and all the rest of the experience is
equally but more evidently our adaptation working itself out.
The rest of the experience is made up of emotions and attitudes.
Emotions are what the reaction, with its reverberation in bodily
changes, feels like. Attitudes are the impulses towards one kind of
behaviour or another which are set ready by the response. They are, as
it were, its outward going part.[2] Sometimes, as here in _Westminster
Bridge_, they are very easily overlooked. But consider a simpler
case--a fit of laughter which it is absolutely essential to conceal,
in Church or during a solemn interview, for example. You contrive not
to laugh; but there is no doubt about the activity of the impulses in
their restricted form. The much more subtle and elaborate impulses
which a poem excites are not different in principle. They do not show
themselves as a rule, they do not come out into the open, largely
because they are so complex. When they have adjusted themselves to one
another and become organized into a coherent whole, the needs concerned
may be satisfied. _In a fully developed man a state of readiness
for action will take the place of action when the full appropriate
situation for action is not present._ The essential peculiarity of
poetry as of all the arts is that the full appropriate situation is
_not_ present. It is an _actor_ we are seeing upon the stage, not
Hamlet. So readiness for action takes the place of actual behaviour.
This is the main plan then of the experience. Signs on the retina,
taken up by sets of needs (remember how many other impressions all
day long remain entirely _unnoticed_ because no interest responds to
them); thence an elaborate agitation of impulses, one branch of which
is _thoughts of_ what the words mean, the other an emotional response
leading to the development of _attitudes_, preparations, that is, for
actions which may or may not take place; the two branches being in
intimate connection.
We must look now a little more closely at these connections. It may
seem odd that we do not more definitely make the thoughts the rulers
and causes of the rest of the response. To do just this has been in
fact the grand error of traditional psychology. Man prefers to stress
the features which distinguish him from monkey, and chief among these
are his intellectual capacities. Important though they are, he has
given them a rank to which they are not entitled. Intellect is an
adjunct to the interests, a means by which they adjust themselves more
successfully. Man is not in any sense primarily an intelligence; he is
a system of interests. Intelligence helps man but does not run him.
Partly through this natural mistake, and partly because intellectual
operations are so much easier to study, the whole traditional analysis
of the working of the mind has been turned upside down. It is largely
as a remedy from the difficulties which this mistake involves that
poetry may have so much importance in the future. But let us look again
more closely at the poetic experience.
In the first place, why is it essential in reading poetry to give the
words their full imagined sound and body? What is meant by saying that
the poet works with this sound and body? The answer is that even before
the words have been intellectually understood and the thoughts they
occasion formed and followed, the movement and sound of the words is
playing deeply and intimately upon the interests. How this happens is
a matter which has yet to be successfully investigated, but that it
happens no sensitive reader of poetry doubts. A good deal of poetry and
even some great poetry exists (_e.g._, some of Shakespeare’s Songs and,
in a different way, much of the best of Swinburne) in which the sense
of the words can be _almost_ entirely missed or neglected without loss.
Never perhaps entirely without effort however; though sometimes with
advantage. But the plain fact that the relative importance of grasping
the sense of the words may vary (compare Browning’s _Before_ with his
_After_) is enough for our purpose here.
In nearly all poetry the sound and feel of the words, what is often
called the _form_ of the poem in opposition to its _content_, get
to work first, and the sense in which the words are taken is subtly
influenced by this fact. Most words are ambiguous as regards their
plain sense, especially in poetry. We can take them as we please in
a variety of senses. The sense we are pleased to choose is the one
which most suits the impulses already stirred through the form of the
verse. The same thing can be noticed in conversation. Not the strict
logical sense of what is said, but the tone of voice and the occasion
are the primary factors by which we interpret. Science, it is worth
noting, endeavours with increasing success to bar out these factors.
We believe a scientist because he can substantiate his remarks, not
because he is eloquent or forcible in his enunciation. In fact, we
distrust him when he seems to be influencing us by his manner.
In its use of words poetry is just the reverse of science. Very
definite thoughts do occur, but not because the words are so chosen as
logically to bar out all possibilities but one. No. But because the
manner, the tone of voice, the cadence and the rhythm play upon our
interests and make _them_ pick out from among an indefinite number of
possibilities the precise particular thought which they need. This
is why poetical descriptions often seem so much more accurate than
prose descriptions. Language logically and scientifically used cannot
describe a landscape or a face. To do so it would need a prodigious
apparatus of names for shades and nuances, for precise particular
qualities. These names do not exist, so other means have to be used.
The poet, even when, like Ruskin or De Quincey, he writes in prose,
makes the reader pick out the precise particular sense required
from an indefinite number of possible senses which a word, phrase
or sentence may carry. The means by which he does this are many and
varied. Some of them have been mentioned above, but the way in which he
uses them is the poet’s own secret, something which cannot be taught.
He knows how to do it, but he does not himself know how it is done.
Misunderstanding and under-estimation of poetry is mainly due to
over-estimation of the thought in it. We can see still more clearly
that thought is not the prime factor if we consider for a moment not
the experience of the reader but that of the poet. Why does the poet
use these words and no others? Not because they stand for a series of
thoughts which in themselves are what he is concerned to communicate.
It is never what a poem _says_ which matters, but what it _is_. The
poet is not writing as a scientist. He uses these words because the
interests which the situation calls into play combine to bring them,
just in this form, into his consciousness _as a means of ordering,
controlling and consolidating_ the whole experience. The experience
itself, the tide of impulses sweeping through the mind, is the source
and the sanction of the words. They represent this experience itself,
not any set of perceptions or reflections, though often to a reader
who approaches the poem wrongly they will seem to be only a series of
remarks about other things. But to a suitable reader the words--if they
actually spring from experience and are not due to verbal habits, to
the desire to be effective, to factitious excogitation, to imitation,
to irrelevant contrivances, or to any other of the failings which
prevent most people from writing poetry--the words will reproduce in
his mind a similar play of interests putting him for the while into a
similar situation and leading to the same response.
Why this should happen is still somewhat of a mystery. An
extraordinarily intricate concourse of impulses brings the words
together. Then in another mind the affair in part reverses itself, the
words bring into being a similar concourse of impulses. The words
which seem to be the effect of the experience in the first instance,
seem to become the cause of a similar experience in the second. A very
odd thing to happen, not exactly paralleled outside communication. But
this description is not quite accurate. The words, as we have seen,
are not simply the effect in one case, nor the cause in the other. In
both cases they are the part of the experience which binds it together,
which gives it a definite structure and keeps it from being a mere
welter of disconnected impulses. They are _the key_, to borrow a useful
metaphor from McDougall, for this particular combination of impulses.
So regarded it is less strange that what the poet wrote should
reproduce his experience in the mind of the reader.