Browning's description of the effect of
the recital of classic poetry upon a band of
piratical Greeks must seem to many persons to
be exaggerated:--
"Then, because Greeks are Greeks, and hearts are hearts,
And poetry is power, they all outbroke
In a great joyous laughter with much love."
Because Americans are Americans, and business is business, and time is
money, and life is earnest, we take our poetry much more seriously than
that. We are ready to form classes to study it and to discuss it, but
these solemn assemblies are not likely to be disturbed by outbursts of
"great joyous laughter."
We usually accept poetry as mental discipline. It is as if the poet
said, "Go to, now. I will produce a masterpiece." Thereupon the
conscientious reader answers, "Very well; I can stand it. I will apply
myself with all diligence, that by means of it I may improve my mind."
Who has not sometimes quailed before the long row of British Poets in
uniform binding, standing stiffly side by side, like so many British
grenadiers on dress parade? Who has not felt his courage ooze away at
the sight of those melancholy volumes labeled Complete Poetical Works?
Poetical Remains they used to call them, and there is something funereal
in their aspect.
The old hymn says, "Religion never was designed to make our pleasures
less," and the same thing ought to be said about poetry. The distaste
for poetry arises largely from the habit of treating it as if it were
only a more difficult kind of prose. We are so much under the tyranny of
the scientific method that the habits of the school-room intrude, and we
try to extract instruction from what was meant to give us joy. The
prosaic commentary obscures the beauty of the text, so that
"The glad old romance, the gay chivalrous story,
With its fables of faery, its legends of glory,
Is turned to a tedious instruction, not new,
To the children, who read it insipidly through."
One of the most ruthless invasions of the prosaic faculties into the
realm of poetry comes from the thirst for general information. When this
thirst becomes a disease, it is not satisfied with census reports and
encyclopaedia articles, but values literature according to the number of
facts presented. Suppose these lines from "Paradise Lost" to be taken
for study:--
"Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High over-arched embower, or scattered sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry."
What an opportunity this presents to the schoolmaster! "Come now," he
cries with pedagogic glee, "answer me a few questions. Where is
Vallombrosa? What is the character of its autumnal foliage? Bound
Etruria. What is sedge? Explain the myth of Orion? Point out the
constellation on the map of the heavens. Where is the Red Sea? Who was
Busiris? By what other name was he known? Who were the Memphian
Chivalry?"
Here is material for exhaustive research in geography, ancient and
modern, history, botany, astronomy, meteorology, chronology, and
archaeology. The industrious student may get almost as much information
out of "Paradise Lost" as from one of those handy compilations of useful
knowledge, which are sold on the railway cars for twenty-five cents. As
for the poetry of Milton, that is another matter.
* * * * *
Next to the temptation to use a poem as a receptacle for a mass of
collateral information is that to use it for the display of one's own
penetration. As in the one case it is treated as if it were an
encyclopaedia article, in the other it is treated as if it were a verbal
puzzle. It is taken for granted that the intention of the poet is to
conceal thought, and the game is for the reader to find it out. We are
hunting for hidden meanings, and we greet one another with the grim
salutation of the creatures in the jungle: "Good hunting!" "What is the
meaning of this passage?" Who has not heard this sudden question
propounded in regard to the most transparent sentence from an author who
is deemed worthy of study? The uninitiated, in the simplicity of his
heart, might answer that he probably means what he says. Not at all; if
that were so, "what are we here for?" We are here to find hidden
meanings, and one who finds the meaning simple must be stopped, as
Armado stops Moth, with
"Define, define, well-educated infant."
It is a verbal masquerade to which we have been invited. No knowing what
princes in disguise, as well as anarchists and nihilists and other
objectionably interesting persons, may be discovered when the time for
unmasking comes.
Now, the effect of all this is that many persons turn away from the
poets altogether. Why should they spend valuable time in trying to
unravel the meaning of lines which were invented to baffle them? There
are plenty of things we do not understand, without going out of our way
to find them. Then, as Pope observes,
"True No-meaning puzzles more than Wit."
The poets themselves, as if conscious that they are objects of
suspicion, are inclined to be apologetic, and endeavor to show that
they are doing business on a sound prosaic basis. Wordsworth set the
example of such painstaking self-justification. His conscience compelled
him to make amends to the literal minded Public for poetic
indiscretions, and to offer to settle all claims for damages. What a
shame-faced excuse he makes for the noble lines on Rob Roy's grave. "I
have since been told that I was misinformed as to the burial-place of
Rob Roy; if so, I may plead in excuse that I wrote on apparently good
authority, namely that of a well-educated lady who lived at the head of
the lake."
One is reminded of the preface to the works of The Sweet Singer of
Michigan: "This little book is composed of truthful pieces. All those
which speak of being killed, died, or drowned are truthful songs, others
are more truth than poetry."
It is against this mistaken conscientiousness that the Gentle Reader
protests. He insists that the true "defense of poesy" is that it has an
altogether different function from prose. It is not to be appreciated by
the prosaic understanding; unless, indeed, that awkward faculty be
treated to some Delsartean decomposing exercises to get rid of its
stiffness.
"When I want more truth than poetry," he says, "I will go directly to
The Sweet Singer of Michigan, or I will inquire of the well-educated
lady who lives at the head of the lake. I do not like to have a poet
troubled about such small matters."
Then he reads with approval the remarks of one of his own order who
lived in the seventeenth century, who protests against those "who take
away the liberty of a poet and fetter his feet in the shackles of an
historian. For why should a poet doubt in story to mend the intrigues of
fortune by more delightful conveyances of probable fictions because
austere historians have entered into bond to truth; an obligation which
were in poets as foolish and unnecessary as is the bondage of false
martyrs, who lie in chains for a mistaken opinion. But by this I would
imply that truth, narrative and past, is the idol of historians (who
worship a dead thing), and truth operative and by effects continually
alive is the mistress of poets, who hath not her existence in matter but
in reason."
I am well aware that the attitude of the Gentle Reader seems to many
strenuous persons to be unworthy of our industrial civilization. These
persons insist that we shall make hard work of our poetry, if for no
other reason than to preserve our self-respect. Here as elsewhere they
insist upon the stern law that if a man will not labor neither shall he
eat. Even the poems of an earlier and simpler age which any child can
understand must be invested with some artificial difficulty. The learned
guardians of these treasures insist that they cannot be appreciated
unless there has been much preliminary wrestling with a "critical
apparatus," and much delving among "original sources." This is the same
principle that makes the prudent householder provide a sharp saw and a
sufficient pile of cord wood as a test to be applied to the stranger who
asks for a breakfast. There is much academic disapproval of one who in
defiance of all law insists on enjoying poetry after his own "undressed,
unpolished, uneducated, unpruned, untrained, or rather unlettered, or
ratherest unconfirmed fashion." I, however, so thoroughly sympathize
with the Gentle Reader that I desire to present his point of view.
To understand poetry is a vain ambition. That which we fully understand
is the part that is not poetry. It is that which passes our
understanding which has the secret in itself. There is an incommunicable
grace that defies all attempts at analysis. Poetry is like music; it is
fitted, not to define an idea or to describe a fact, but to voice a
mood. The mood may be the mood of a very simple person,--the mood of a
shepherd watching his flocks, or of a peasant in the fields; or, on the
other hand, it may be the mood of a philosopher whose mind has been
engrossed with the most subtle problems of existence. But in each case
the mood, by some suggestion, must be communicated to us. Thoughts and
facts must be transfigured; they must come to us as through some finer
medium. As we are told that we must experience religion before we know
what religion is, so we must experience poetry. The poet is the
enchanter, and we are the willing victims of his spells:--
"Would'st thou see
A man i' th' clouds and hear him speak to thee?
Would'st thou be in a dream and yet not sleep?
Or would'st thou in a moment laugh and weep?
Wouldest thou lose thyself and catch no harm?
And find thyself again without a charm?
* * * * *
O then come hither
And lay my book, thy head and heart together."
Only the reader who yields to the charm can dream the dream. The poet
may weave his story of the most common stuff, but "there's magic in the
web of it." If we are conscious of this magical power, we forgive the
lack of everything else. The poet may be as ignorant as Aladdin himself,
but he has a strange power over our imaginations. At his word they obey,
traversing continents, building palaces, painting pictures. They say,
"We are ready to obey as thy slaves, and the slaves of all that have
that lamp in their hands,--we and the other slaves of the lamp."
This is the characteristic of the poet's power. He does not construct a
work of the imagination,--he makes our imaginations do that. That is why
the fine passages of elaborate description in verse are usually
failures. The verse-maker describes accurately and at length. The poet
speaks a word, and Presto! change! We are transported into a new land,
and our eyes are "baptized into the grace and privilege of seeing."
Many have taken in hand to write descriptions of spring; and some few
painstaking persons have nerved themselves to read what has been
written. I turn to the prologue of the "Canterbury Tales;" it is not
about spring, it is spring, and I am among those who long to go upon a
pilgrimage. A description of a jungle is an impertinence to one who has
come under the spell of William Blake's
"Tiger! tiger! burning bright
In the forest of the night."
Those fierce eyes glowing there in the darkness sufficiently illuminate
the scene. Immediately it is midsummer, and we feel all its delicious
languor when Browning's David sings of
"The sleep in the dried river-channel where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well."
The first essential to the enjoyment of poetry is leisure. The demon
Hurry is the tempter, and knowledge is the forbidden fruit in the poet's
paradise. To enjoy poetry, you must renounce not only your easily
besetting sins, but your easily besetting virtues as well. You must not
be industrious, or argumentative, or conscientious, or strenuous. I do
not mean that you must be a person of unlimited leisure and without
visible means of support. I have known some very conscientious students
of literature who, when off duty, found time to enjoy poetry. I mean
that if you have only half an hour for poetry, for that half hour you
must be in a leisurely frame of mind.
The poet differs from the novelist in that he requires us to rest from
our labors. The ordinary novel is easy reading, because it takes us as
we are, in the midst of our hurry. The mind has been going at express
speed all the day; what the novelist does is to turn the switch, and off
we go on another track. The steam is up, and the wheels go around just
the same. The great thing is still action, and we eagerly turn the pages
to see what is going to happen next,--unless we are reading some of our
modern realistic studies of character. Even then we are lured on by the
expectation that, at the last moment, something may happen. But when we
turn to the poets, we are in the land of the lotus-eaters. The
atmosphere is that of a perfect day,
"Whereon it is enough for me
Not to be doing, but to be."