imaginative, the essential of the matter is that it be the expression of
passionate emotion. By passionate emotion is meant any feeling, powerful
or delicate, which is capable of filling the whole soul; of taking
possession for the time being of the entire man. It may be fierce hate,
enthralling love, ambition, lust, rage, jealousy, joy, sorrow, any
over-mastering mood, or it may be one of those intangible inclinations,
those moods of mist, ethereal as hazes in October, those caprices of
pleasure or sadness which Tennyson had the art so marvelously to
reproduce. Passionate emotion is by no means necessarily intense, but it
is engrossing. For the time being, at least, it seems to absorb the
whole inner consciousness.
It is the completeness with which such a mood takes possession of the
mind, so that for the moment it is to all intents and purposes the man
himself, that gives it so great an importance in human life and makes it
the fitting and the sole essential theme of the highest art. Behind all
serious human effort lies the instinctive sense of the fitness of
things. The artist must always convince that his end is worthy of the
means which he employs to reach it; and it follows naturally that the
writer who uses imaginative diction and the elaborateness of metre must
justify this by what he embodies in them. Metrical forms are as much
out of place in treating of the material concerns of life as would be
court robes or religious rites in the reaping of a field or the selling
of a cargo of wool. The poet is justified in his use of all the
resources of form and of poetic diction by the fact that the message
which he is endeavoring to convey is high and noble; that the meaning
which he attempts to impart is so profoundly subtle as to be
inexpressible unless the words which he employs are assisted by the
language of rhythm and metre.
That the reader unconsciously recognizes the fact that the essential
difference in the office of prose and poetry makes inevitable a
difference also of method, is shown by his dissatisfaction when the
writer of prose invades the province of poetry. The arrangement of the
words of prose into systematic rhythm produces at once an effect of
weakness and of insincerity. Dickens in some of his attempts to reach
deep pathos has made his prose metrical with results most disastrous.
The mood of poetry is so elevated that metrical conventions seem
appropriate and natural; whereas in the mood of even the most emotional
prose they appear fantastical and affected. The difference is not unlike
that between the speaking and the singing voice. A man who sang in
conversation, or even in a highly excited oration, would simply make
himself ridiculous. In song this manner of using the voice is not only
natural but inevitable and delightful. What would be uncalled for in the
most exalted moods of the prose writer is natural and fitting in the
case of the poet, because the poet is endeavoring to embody, in language
the most deep, the most high, the most delicate experiences of which
humanity is capable. The form is with him a part of his normal language.
To say in prose: "My love is like a red rose newly sprung in June, or
like a melody beautifully played," means not much. Yet the words
themselves are not widely varied from those in which Burns conveys the
same ideas with so great an added beauty, and so much more emotional
force:--
Oh, my luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
Oh, my luve's like a melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
The metrical cadences woo the ear like those of a melody sweetly played,
and to that which the words may say or suggest they add an effect yet
more potent and delightful.
A moment's consideration of these facts enables one to estimate rightly
the stricture made by Plato:--
You have often seen what a poor appearance the tales of poets make
when stripped of the colors which music puts upon them, and recited in
prose. They are like faces which were never really beautiful, but only
blooming, and now the bloom of youth has passed away from them.
It would be more just and more exact to say that they are like the
framework of a palace from which have been stripped the slabs of
precious marble which covered it. It is neither more nor less
reasonable to object to poetry that its theme told in prose is slight or
dull than it would be to scorn St. Peter's because its rafters and
ridgepole might not be attractive if they stood out bare against the
sky. The form is in poetry as much an integral part as walls and roof
and dome, statues and jewel-like marbles, are part of the temple.
Leaving out of consideration those peculiarities such as rhyme and
special diction, which although often of much effect are not essential
since poetry may be great without them, it is sufficiently exact for a
general examination to say that the effects of poetry are produced by
the threefold union of ideas, suggestion, and melody. In the use of
ideas poetry is on much the same footing as prose, except in so far as
it deals with exalted moods which have no connection with thoughts which
are mean or commonplace. In the use of suggestion poetry but carries
farther the means employed in imaginative prose. Melody may be said
practically to be its own prerogative. The smoothest flow of rhythmical
prose falls far below the melodious cadences of metrical language; and
in this manner of appeal to the senses and the soul of man verse has no
rival save music itself.
These three qualities may be examined separately. Verse may be found in
which there is almost nothing but melody, divorced from suggestion or
ideas. There are good examples in Edward Lear's "Nonsense Songs," in
which there is an intentional lack of sense; or in the "Alice" books,
as, for instance:--
And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgy wood,
And burbled as it came!...
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
Or one may take something which will convey no idea and no suggestion
beyond that which comes with sound and rhythm. Here is a verse once made
in sport to pass as a folk-song in an unknown tongue:--
Apaulthee kong lay laylarthay;
Ameeta tinta prown,
Lay lista, lay larba, lay moona long,
Toolay échola doundoolay koko elph zong,
Im lay melplartha bountaina brown.
This is a collection of unmeaning syllables, and yet to the ear it is a
pleasure. The examples may seem trivial, but they serve to illustrate
the fact that there is magic in the mere sound of words, meaning though
they have none.
The possibility of pleasing solely by the arrangement and choice of
words in verse has been a snare to more than one poet; as a neglect of
melody has been the fault of others. In much of the later work of
Swinburne it is evident that the poet became intoxicated with the mere
beauty of sound, and forgot that poetry demands thought as well as
melody; while the reader is reluctantly forced to acknowledge that in
some of the verse of Browning there is a failure to recognize that
melody is an element as essential as thought.
As verse may be found which has little but melody, so is it possible to
find verse in which there is practically nothing save melody and
suggestion. In "Ulalume" Poe has given an instance of the effect
possible from the combining of these with but the thinnest thread of
idea:--
The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,--
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October,
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid-region of Weir--
It was down by the dark tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.
There is here no definite train of thought. It is an attempt to convey a
certain mood by combining mysterious and weird suggestion with melody
enticing and sweet.
A finer example is the closing passage in "Kubla Khan." The suggestions
are more vivid, and the imagination far more powerful.
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw;
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome; those caves of ice;
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry: "Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair;
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise."
Here there is a more evident succession of ideas than in "Ulalume;" but
in both the effect is almost entirely produced by the music and the
suggestion, with very little aid from ideas.
How essential to poetry are melody and suggestion is at once evident
when one examines verse which contains ideas without these fundamental
qualities. Wordsworth, great as he is at his best, affords ready
examples here. The following is by no means the least poetical passage
in "The Prelude," but it is sufficiently far from being poetry in any
high sense to serve as an illustration:--
I was a better judge of thoughts than words,
Misled in estimating words, not only
By common inexperience of youth,
But by the trade of classic niceties,
The dangerous craft of culling term and phrase
From languages that want the living voice
To carry meaning to the natural heart.
Here are ideas, but there is no emotion, and the thing could be said
better in prose. It is as fatal to try to express in poetry what is not
elevated enough for poetic treatment as it is to endeavor to say in
prose those high things which can be embodied by poetry only. Melody
alone, or suggestiveness alone, is better than ideas alone if there is
to be an attempt to produce the effect of poetry.
Poetry which is complete and adequate adds melody and suggestion to
that framework of ideas which is to them as the skeleton to flesh and
blood. Any of the great lyrics of the language might be given as
examples. The reader has but to open his Shakespeare's "Sonnets" at
random, as for instance, at this:--
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seem'd it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
It is not necessary to carry this analysis farther. The object of
undertaking it is to impress upon the reader the fact that in poetry
form is an essential element in the language of the art. The student
must realize that the poet means his rhythm as truly as and in the same
measure that he means the thought; and that to attempt to appreciate
poetry without sensitiveness to melody is as hopeless as would be a
similar attempt to try to appreciate music. When Wordsworth said that
poetry is inevitable, he meant the metre no less than the thought; he
wished to convey the fact that the impassioned mood breaks into melody
of word as the full heart breaks into song. The true poem is the
embodiment of what can be expressed in no other way than by that
especial combination of idea, suggestion, and sound. The thought, the
hint, and the music are united in one unique and individual whole.
XVIII
POETRY AND LIFE
Vitally to appreciate what poetry is, it is necessary to realize what
are its relations to life. Looked at in itself its essentials are
emotion which is capable of taking entire possession of the
consciousness, and the embodiment of this emotion by the combined
effects of imaginative language and melodious form. It is still needful,
however, to consider how this art acts upon human beings, and why there
has been claimed for it so proud a pre-eminence among the arts.
Why, for instance, should Emerson speak of the embodiment of mere
emotion as "the only verity," Wordsworth as "the breath and finer spirit
of all knowledge," and why does Mrs. Browning call poets "the only
truth-tellers"? The answer briefly is: Because consciousness is
identical with emotion, and consciousness is life. For all practical
purposes man exists but in that he feels. The universe concerns him in
so far as it touches his feelings, and it concerns him no farther. That
is for man most essential which comes most near to the conditions of his
existence. Pure and ideal emotion is essential truth in the sense that
it approaches most nearly to the consciousness,--that is, to the actual
being of the race.
I am aware that this sounds dangerously like an attempt to be darkly
metaphysical; but it is impossible to talk on high themes without to
some extent using high terms. It is useless to hope to put into words
all the mysteries of the relations of art to life, yet it is not
impossible to approximate somewhat to what must be the truth of the
matter, although in doing it one inevitably runs the risk of seeming to
attempt to say what cannot be said. What I have been endeavoring to
convey will perhaps be plainer if I say that for purposes of our
discussion man is practically alive only in so far as he realizes life.
This realization of life, this supreme triumph of inner consciousness,
comes to him through his feelings,--indeed, is perhaps to be considered
as identical with his feelings. His sensations affect him only by the
emotions which they excite. His emotion, in a word, is the measure of
his existence. Now the emotion of man always responds, in a degree
marked by appreciation, to certain presentations of the relation of
things, to certain considerations of the nature of human life, and above
all to certain demonstrations of the possibilities of human existence.
If these are made actual and clear to the mind, they cannot fail to
arouse that engrossing realization which is the height of consciousness.
To enable a man to seize with his imagination the ideal of love or hate,
of fear or courage, of shame or honor, is to make him kindle and thrill.
It is to make him for the time being thoroughly and richly alive, and it
is to increase greatly his power of essential life. These are the
things which most deeply touch human creatures; they are the universal
in that they appeal to all sane hearts and minds; they are the eternal
as measured by mortal existence because they have power to touch the men
of all time; hence they are the real truths; they are, for beings under
the conditions of earthly existence, the only verities.
The ordinary life of man is not unlike the feeble flame of a miner's
lamp, half smothered in some underground gallery until a draught of
vital air kindles it into sudden glow and sparkle. Most human beings
have but a dull flicker of half-alive consciousness until some outward
breath causes it to flash into quick and quivering splendor. Poetry is
that divine air, that breeze from unscaled heights of being, the
kindling breath by which the spark becomes a flame.
It is but as a means of conveying the essential truth which is the
message of poetry, that the poet employs obvious truth. The facts which
impress themselves upon the outer senses are to him merely a language by
means of which he seeks to impart the higher facts that are apprehended
only by the inner self; those facts of emotion which it is his office as
a seer to divine and to interpret. The swineherd and the wandering
minstrel saw the same wood and sky and lake; but to one they were earth
and air and water; while to the other they were the outward and visible
embodiment of the spirit of beauty which is eternal though earth and sea
and sky vanish. To Peter Bell the primrose by the river's brim was but
a primrose and nothing more; to the poet it was the symbol and the
embodiment of loveliness, the sign of an eternal truth. To the laborer
going afield in the early light the dewdrops are but so much water,
wetting unpleasantly his shoes; to Browning it was a symbol of the
embodiment in woman of all that is pure and holy when he sang:--
There's a woman like a dew-drop, she's so purer than the purest.
It is evident from what has been said that in reading poetry it is
necessary to penetrate through the letter to the spirit. I have already
spoken at length in a former lecture upon the need of knowing the
language of literature, and of being in sympathy with the mood of the
writer. This is especially true in regard to poetry, since poetry
becomes great in proportion as it deals with the spirit rather than with
the letter. "We are all poets when we read a poem well," Carlyle has
said. It is only by entering into the mood and by sharing the exaltation
of the poet that we are able to appreciate his message. A poem is like a
window of stained glass. From without one may be able to gain some
general idea of its design and to guess crudely at its hues; but really
to perceive its beauty, its richness of design, its sumptuousness of
color, one must stand within the very sanctuary itself.
It is partly from the lack of sensitiveness of the imagination of the
reading public, I believe, that in the latter half of this century the
novel has grown into a prominence so marked. The great mass of readers
no longer respond readily to poetry, and fiction is in a sense a
simplification of the language of imagination so that it may be
comprehended by those who cannot rise to the heights of verse. In this
sense novels might almost be called the kindergarten of the imagination.
In fiction, emotional experiences are translated into the language of
ordinary intellectual life; whereas in poetry they are phrased in terms
of the imagination, pure and simple. There can be no question of the
superiority of the means employed by the poet. Much which is embodied in
verse cannot be expressed by prose of any sort, no matter how exalted
that prose may be; but for the ordinary intelligence the language of
prose is far more easily comprehensible.
* * * * *
What I have been saying, however, may seem to be so general and
theoretical that I may be held not yet fairly to have faced that issue
at which I hinted in the beginning, the issue which Philistine minds
raise bluntly: What is the use of poetry? Philistines are willing to
concede that there is a sensuous pleasure to be gained from verse. They
are able to perceive how those who care for such things may find an
enervating enjoyment in the linked sweetness of cadence melting into
cadence, in musical line and honeyed phrase. What they are utterly
unable to understand is how thoughtful men, men alive to the practical
needs and the real interests of the race, can speak of poetry as if it
were a thing of genuine importance in the history and development of
mankind. It would not be worth while to attempt an answer to this for
the benefit of the Philistines. They are a folk who are so completely
ignorant of the higher good of life that it is impossible to make them
understand. Their conception of value does not reach beyond pecuniary
and physical standards; they comprehend nothing which is not expressed
in material terms. One who attempted to describe a symphony to a deaf
man would not be more at a loss for terms than must be he who attempts
to set forth the worth of art to those ignorant of real values. The
question may be answered, but to those who most need to be instructed in
regard to æsthetic values any answer must forever remain unintelligible.
There are, however, many sincere and earnest seekers after truth who are
unable to clear up their ideas when they come in contact, as they must
every day, with the assumption that poetry is but the plaything of idle
men and women, a thing not only unessential but even frivolous. For them
it is worth while to formulate some sort of a statement; although to do
this is like making the attempt to declare why the fragrance of the rose
is sweet or why the hue of its petals gives delight.
In the first place, then, the use of poetry is to nourish the
imagination. I have spoken earlier of the impossibility of fulfilling
the higher functions of life without this faculty. A common error
regards imagination as a quality which has to do with rare and
exceptional experiences; as a power of inventing whimsical and
impossible thoughts; as a sort of jester to beguile idle moments of the
mind. In reality imagination is to the mental being what blood is to the
physical man. Upon it the intellect and the emotional consciousness
alike depend for nourishment. Without it the mind is powerless to seize
or to make really its own anything which lies outside of actual
experience. Without it the broker could not so fully realize his cunning
schemes as to manipulate the market and control the price of stocks;
without it the inventor could devise no new machine, the scientist grasp
no fresh secret of laws which govern the universe. It is the divine
power in virtue of which man subdues the world to his uses. In a word,
imagination is that faculty which distinguishes man from brute.
It is the beginning of wisdom to know; it is the culmination of wisdom
to feel. The intellect accumulates; the emotion assimilates. What we
learn, we possess; but what we feel, we are. The perception acquires,
and the imagination realizes; and thus it is that only through the
imagination can man build up and nourish that inner being which is the
true and vital self. To cultivate the imagination, therefore, is an
essential--nay, more; it is the one essential means of insuring the
progression of the race. This is the great office of all art, but
perhaps most obviously is it the noble prerogative and province of
poetry. "In the imagination," wrote Coleridge, "is the distinguishing
characteristic of man as a progressive being." To kindle into flame the
dull embers of this god-like attribute is the first office of poetry;
and were this all, it would lift the art forever above every cumbering
material care and engrossing intellectual interest.
In the second place, the use of poetry is to give man knowledge of his
unrecognized experiences or his unrealized capacities of feeling. The
poet speaks what many have felt, but what none save he can say. He
accomplishes the hitherto impossible. He makes tangible and subject the
vague emotions which disquiet us as if they were elusive ghosts haunting
the dwelling of the soul, unsubdued and oppressive in their mystery. The
joy of a moment he has fixed for all time; the throb gone almost before
it is felt he has made captive; to the evasive emotion he has given
immortality. In a word, it is his office to confer upon men dominion
over themselves.
Third, it is poetry which nourishes and preserves the optimism of the
race. Poetry is essentially optimistic. It raises and encourages by
fixing the mind upon the possibilities of life. Even when it bewails
what is gone, when it weeps lost perfection, vanished joy, and crushed
love, the reader receives from the poetic form, from the uplift of
metrical inspiration, a sense that the possibilities of existence
overwhelm individual pain. The fact that such blessings could and may
exist is not only consolation when fate has wrenched them away, but the
vividness with which they are recalled may almost make them seem to be
relived. That
A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things,
is not the whole story. In times of deepest woe it is this very
remembrance which makes it possible to live on at all. The unconscious
and the inevitable lesson of all true art, moreover, is that the
possibility of beauty in life is compensation for the anguish which its
existence entails. The poet who weeps for the lost may have no word of
comfort to offer, but the fact that life itself is of supreme
possibilities is shown inevitably and persuasively by the fact that he
is so deeply moved. He could not be thus stricken had he not known very
ecstasies of joy; and his message to the race is that such bliss has
been and thus may be again. More than this, the fact that he in his
anguish instinctively turns to art is the most eloquent proof that
however great may be the sorrows of life there is for them an
alleviating balm in æsthetic enjoyment. He may speak of