A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT
Not even a paper shortage has been potent to give the lie to the author
of _Ecclesiastes_, but it has fanned into flame the long smouldering
resentment of those who are wearily conscious that of making many books
there is no end. No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered
to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers'
state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the
newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the
exasperated cry, Why? Why? and again Why?
Fortunately for themselves, most of the poets who have taken the poet's
character as their theme, indulged their weakness for words before that
long-suffering bookworm, the reader, had turned, but one who at the
present day drags from cobwebby corners the accusive mass of material on
the subject, must seek to justify, not merely the loquacity of its
authors, but one's own temerity as well, in forcing it a second time
upon the jaded attention of the public.
If one had been content merely to make an anthology of poems dealing
with the poet, one's deed would perhaps have been easier to excuse, for
the public has been so often assured that anthologies are an economical
form of publication, and a time-saving form of predigested food, that it
usually does not stop to consider whether the material was worth
collecting in the first place. Gleaner after gleaner has worked in the
field of English literature, sorting and sifting, until almost the last
grain, husk, straw and thistle have been gathered and stored with their
kind. But instead of making an anthology, we have gone on the assumption
that something more than accidental identity of subject-matter holds
together the apparently desultory remarks of poets on the subject of the
poet's eyebrows, his taste in liquors, his addiction to midnight
rambles, and whatnot. We have followed a labyrinthine path through the
subject with faith that, if we were but patient in observing the clues,
we should finally emerge at a point of vantage on the other side of the
woods.
The primary grounds of this faith may have appeared to the skeptic
ridiculously inadequate. Our faith was based upon the fact that, more
than two thousand years ago, a serious accusation had been made against
poets, against which they had been challenged to defend themselves. This
led us to conclude that there must be unity of intention in poetry
dealing with the poet, for we believed that when English poets talked of
themselves and their craft, they were attempting to remove the stigma
placed upon the name of poet by Plato's charge.
Now it is easy for a doubter to object that many of the poems on the
subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning
over the brink of introspection in the attitude of Narcissus. One need
seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive
for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible
that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the
conviction that no one else understands him, and that this conviction is
founded upon a very real attitude of hostility on the part of his
companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet and the public
is so notorious that Edmund Gosse is able to state as a truism:
While in France poetry has been accustomed to reflect the
general tongue of the people, the great poets of England have
almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance
between their own aims and interests and those of the nation.
The result has been that England, the most inartistic of the
modern races, has produced the largest number of exquisite
literary artists. [Footnote: _French Profiles_, p. 344.]
Furthermore, even though everyone may agree that a lurking sense of
hostile criticism is back of the poet's self-absorption, another ground
for skepticism may lie in our assumption that Plato is the central
figure in the opposition. It is usually with purpose to excite the envy
of contemporary enemies that poets call attention to their graces, the
student may discover. Frequently the quarrels leading them to flaunt
their personalities in their verses have arisen over the most personal
and ephemeral of issues. Indeed, we may have appeared to falsify in
classifying their enemies under general heads, when for Christopher
North, Judson, Belfair, Friend Naddo, Richard Bame, we substituted faces
of cipher foolishness, abstractions which we named the puritan, the
philosopher, the philistine. Possibly by so doing we have given the
impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when
they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a
personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still
more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the
poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a
challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's
_Republic_. It is doubtful even whether a number of our poets are
aware of the existence of Plato's challenge, and much more doubtful
whether they have it in mind as they write.
Second thought must make it clear, however, that to prove ignorance of
Plato's accusation on the part of one poet and another does not at all
impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are
answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the
_Republic_ through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it
is unsafe to assert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to
poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a
source in the _Republic_. But even this is aside from the point.
One might concede that the wide-spread modern antagonism to poetry would
have been the same if Plato had never lived, and still maintain that in
the _Republic_ is expressed for all time whatever in anti-aesthetic
criticism is worthy of a serious answer. Whether poets themselves are
aware of it or not, we have a right to assert that in concerning
themselves with the character of the ideal poet, they are responding to
Plato's challenge.
This may not be enough to justify our faith that these defensive
expositions lead us anywhere. Let us agree that certain poets of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries have answered Plato's challenge. But
has the Poet likewise answered it? If from their independent efforts to
paint the ideal poet there has emerged a portrait as sculpturally clear
in outline as is Plato's portrait of the ideal philosopher, we shall
perhaps be justified in saying, Yes, the Poet, through a hundred mouths,
has spoken.
Frankly, the composite picture which we have been considering has not
sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to
an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring
out of myriad details than they shift under the onlooker's eyes to a
totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is
excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with
half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one would appreciate its
central conception.
Apparently readers of English poetry have not taken the trouble to scan
it with such care. They may excuse their indifference by declaring that
an attempt to discover a common aesthetic principle in a collection of
views as catholic as those with which we have dealt is as absurd as an
attempt to discover philosophical truth by taking a census of general
opinion. Still, obvious as are the limitations of a popular vote in
determining an issue, it has a certain place in the discovery of truth.
One would not entirely despise the benefit derived from a general survey
of philosophers' convictions, for instance. Into the conclusions of each
philosopher, even of the greatest, there are bound to enter certain
personal whimsicalities of thought, which it is profitable to eliminate,
by finding the common elements in the thought of several men. If the
quest of a universal least common denominator forces one to give up
everything that is of significance in the views of philosophers, there
is profit, at least, in learning that the title of philosopher does not
carry with it a guarantee of truth-telling. On the other hand if we find
universal recognition of some fundamental truth, a common _cogito ergo
sum_, or the like, acknowledged by all philosophers, we have made a
discovery as satisfactory in its way as is acceptance of the complex
system of philosophy offered by Plato or Descartes. There seems to be no
real reason why it should not be quite as worth while to take a similar
census of the views of poets.
After hearkening to the general suffrage of poets on the question of the
poet's character, we must bring a serious charge against them if a
deafening clamor of contradiction reverberates in our ears. In such a
case their claim that they are seers, or masters of harmony, can be
worth little. The unbiased listener is likely to assure us that
clamorous contradiction is precisely what the aggregate of poets'
speaking amounts to, but we shall be slow to acknowledge as much. Have
we been merely the dupe of pretty phrasing when we felt ourselves
insured against discord by the testimony of Keats? Hear him:
How many bards gild the lapses of time!
* * * * *
... Often, when I sit me down to rhyme,
These will in throngs before my mind intrude,
But no confusion, no disturbance rude
Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.
However incompatible the characteristics of the poets celebrated by
Wordsworth and by Swinburne, by Christina Rossetti and by Walt Whitman
may have seemed in immediate juxtaposition, we have trusted that we need
only retire to a position where "distance of recognizance bereaves"
their individual voices, in order to detect in their mingled notes
"pleasing music, and not wild uproar."
The critic who condemns as wholly discordant the variant notes of our
multitudinous verse-writers may point out that we should have had more
right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true
poets from false. Those who have least claim to the title of poet have
frequently been most garrulous in voicing their convictions. Moreover,
these pseudo-poets outnumber genuine poets one hundred to one, yet no
one in his right mind would contend that their expressions of opinion
represent more than a straw vote, if they conflict with the judgment of
a single true poet.
Still, our propensity for listening to the rank breath of the multitude
is not wholly indefensible. In the first place pseudo-poets have not
created so much discord as one might suppose. A lurking sense of their
own worthlessness has made them timid of utterance except as they echo
and prolong a note that has been struck repeatedly by singers of
reputation. This echoing, it may be added, has sometimes been effective
in bringing the traditions of his craft to the attention of a young
singer as yet unaware of them. Thus Bowles and Chivers, neither of whom
has very strong claim to the title of bard, yet were in a measure
responsible for the minor note in Coleridge's and Poe's description of
the typical poet.
Even when the voices of spurious bards have failed to chime with the
others, the resulting discord has not been of serious moment. A
counterfeit coin may be as good a touchstone for the detection of pure
silver, as is pure silver for the detection of counterfeit. Not only are
a reader's views frequently clarified by setting a poetaster beside a
poet as a foil, but poets themselves have clarified their views because
they have been incited by declarations in false verse to express their
convictions more unreservedly than they should otherwise have done.
Pseudo-poets have sometimes been of genuine benefit by their
exaggeration of some false note which they have adopted from poetry of
the past. No sooner do they exaggerate such a note, than a concerted
shout of protest from true poets drowns the erroneous statement, and
corrects the misleading impression which careless statements in earlier
verse might have left with us. Thus the morbid singer exhibited in minor
American verse of the last century, and the vicious singer lauded in one
strain of English verse, performed a genuine service by calling forth
repudiation, by major poets, of traits which might easily lead a singer
in the direction of morbidity and vice.
The confusion of sound which our critic complains of is not to be
remedied merely by silencing the chorus of echoic voices. If we dropped
from consideration all but poets of unquestionable merit, we should not
be more successful in detecting a single clear note, binding all their
voices together. When the ideal poet of Shelley is set against that of
Byron, or that of Matthew Arnold against that of Browning, there is no
more unison than when great and small in the poetic world are allowed to
speak indiscriminately.
Does this prove that only the supreme poet speaks truly, and that we
must hush all voices but his if we would learn what is the essential
element in the poetic character? Then we are indeed in a hard case.
There is no unanimity of opinion among us regarding the supreme English
poet of the last century, and if we dared follow personal taste in
declaring one of higher altitude than all the others only a small
percentage of readers would be satisfied when we set up the _Prelude_ or
_Adonais_ or _Childe Harold_ or _Sordello_ beside the _Republic_ as
containing the one portrait of the ideal singer worthy to stand beside
the portrait of the ideal philosopher. And this is not the worst of the
difficulty. Even if we turn from Shelley to Byron, from Wordsworth to
Browning, in quest of the one satisfactory conception of the poet, we
shall not hear in anyone of their poems the single clear ringing note
for which we are listening. When anyone of these men is considering the
poetic character, his thought behaves like a pendulum, swinging back and
forth between two poles.
Thus we ourselves have admitted the futility of our quest of truth, the
critic may conclude. But no, before we admit as much, let us see exactly
what constitutes the lack of unity which troubles us. After its
persistence in verse of the same country, the same period, the same
tradition, the same poet, even, has led us to the brink of despair, its
further persistence rouses in us fresh hope, or at least intense
curiosity, for what impresses us as the swinging of a pendulum keeps up
its rhythmical beat, not merely in the mind of each poet, but in each
phase of his thought. We find the same measured antithesis of thought,
whether he is considering the singer's environment or his health, his
inspiration or his mission.
In treatment even of the most superficial matters related to the poet's
character, this vibration forces itself upon our attention. Poets are
sofar from subscribing to Taine's belief in the supreme importance of
environment as molder of genius that the question of the singer's proper
habitat is of comparative indifference to them, yet the dualism that we
have noted runs as true to form here as in more fundamental issues. When
one takes the suffrage of poets in general on the question of
environment, two voices are equally strong. Genius is fostered by
solitude, we hear; but again, genius is fostered by human companionship.
At first we may assume that this divergence of view characterizes
separate periods. Writers in the romantic period, we say, praised the
poet whose thought was turned inward by solitude; while writers in the
Victorian period praised the poet whose thought was turned upon the
spectacle of human passions. But on finding that this classification is
true only in the most general way, we go farther. Within the Victorian
period Browning, we say, is the advocate of the social poet, as Arnold
is the advocate of the solitary one. But still our classification is
inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true
that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their
cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: _Pauline_.] But he
makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in
quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary
poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern
life". [Footnote: _The Scholar Gypsy_.] Yet he preaches that the
duty of the poet is
to scan
Not his own course, but that of man.
[Footnote: _Resignation_.]
Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does
Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions?
Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the
still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Shelley, Byron, the same
antithesis of thought is not less evident.
We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an
avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for. It is
complete absorption in the drame of human life that makes one a poet,
they aver; but again, it is complete isolation that allows the inmost
poetry of one's nature to rise to consciousness. At the same time they
make it clear that the supreme poet needs the gifts of both
environments. To quote Walt Whitman,
What the full-grown poet came,
Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe
with all its shows of day and night) saying, He
is mine;
But out spake too the Soul of men, proud, jealous
and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone;
--Then the full-grown poet stood between the two and
took each by the hand;
And today and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly
holding hands,
Which he will never release till he reconciles the two,
And wholly and joyously blends them.
The paradox in poets' views was equally perplexing, no matter what phase
of the poetic character was considered. A mere resumé of the topics
discussed in these essays is enough to make the two horns of the dilemma
obtrude themselves. Did we consider the financial status of the poet? We
heard that he should experience all the luxurious sensations that wealth
can bring; on the other hand we heard that his poverty should shield him
from distractions that might call him away from accumulation of
spiritual treasure. Did we consider the poet's age? We heard that the
freshness of sensation possessed only by youth carries the secret of
poetry; on the other hand we heard that the secret lies in depth of
spiritual insight possible only to old age. So in the allied question of
the poet's body. He should have
The dress
Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness
At eye and ear,
that no beauty in the physical world may escape him. Yet he should be
absorbed in the other world to such a degree that blindness, even, is a
blessing to him, enabling him to "see, no longer blinded by his eyes."
The question of the poet's health arose. He should have the exuberance
and aplomb of the young animal; no, he should have a body frail enough
to enable him, like the mediæval mystic, to escape from its
importunatedemands upon the spirit.
In the more fundamental questions that poets considered, relating to the
poet's temperament, his loves, his inspiration, his morality, his
religion, his mission, the same cleavage invariably appeared. What
constitutes the poetic temperament? It is a fickle interchange of joy
and grief, for the poet is lifted on the wave of each new sensation; it
is an imperturbable serenity, for the poet dwells apart with the eternal
verities. What is the distinguishing characteristic of his love? The
object of his worship must be embodied, passionate, yet his desire is
for purely spiritual union with her. What is the nature of his
inspiration? It fills him with trancelike impassivity to sensation; it
comes upon him with such overwhelming sensation that he must touch the
walls to see whether they or his visions are the reality. [Footnote: See
Christopher Wordsworth, _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, Vol. II, p. 480.]
How is his moral life different from that of other men? He is more
fiercely tempted, because he is more sensitive to human passions; he is
shut away from all temptations because his interest is solely in the
principle of beauty. What is the nature of his religious instinct? He is
mad with thirst for God; he will have no God but his own humanity. What
is his mission? He must awaken men to the wonder of the physical world
and fit them to abide therein; he must redeem them from physical
bondage, and open their eyes to the spiritual world.
The impatient listener to this lengthy catalogue of the poet's views may
assert that it has no significance. It merely shows that there are many
kinds of poets, who attempt to imitate many aspects of human life. But
surely our catalogue does not show just this. There is no multiform
picture of the poet here. The pendulum of his desire vibrates
undeviatingly between two points only. Sense and spirit, spirit and
sense, the pulse of his nature seems to reiterate incessantly. There is
no poet so absorbed in sensation that physical objects do not
occasionally fade into unreality when he compares them with the spirit
of life. Even Walt Whitman, most sensuous of all our poets, exclaims,
Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions,
concepts, non-realities.
[Footnote: _Apparitions_.]
On the other hand there is no poet whose taste is so purely spiritual
that he is indifferent to sensation. The idealism of Wordsworth, even,
did not preclude his finding in sensation
An appetite, a feeling and a love
That had no need of a remoter charm
By thought supplied.
Is this systole and diastole of the affection from sense to spirit, from
spirit to sense, peculiarly characteristic of English poets? There may
be some reason for assuming that it is. Historians have repeatedly
pointed out that there are two strains in the English blood, the one
northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern
English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is
wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a
battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the
other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe
to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture
the assertion that the dualism of the poet's desires is not an insular
characteristic, but is typical of his race in every country.
Because the poet is drawn equally to this world and to the other world,
shall we characterize him as a hybrid creature, and assert that an
irreconcilable discord is in his soul? We shall prove ourselves
singularly deaf to concord if we do so. Poets have been telling us over
and over again that the distinctive element in the poetic nature is
harmony. What is harmony? It is the reconciliation of opposites, says
Eurymachus in the _Symposium_. It is union of the finite and the
infinite, says Socrates in the _Philebus_. Do the poet's desires
point in opposite directions? But so, it seems, do the poplars that
stand tiptoe, breathless, at the edge of the dreaming pool. The whole
secret of the aesthetic repose lies in the duality of the poet's desire.
His imagination enables him to see all life as two in one, or one in
two; he leaves us uncertain which. His imagination reflects the
spiritual in the sensual and the sensual in the spiritual till we cannot
tell which is the more tangible or the more meaningful. We sought unity
in the poetic character, but we can reduce a nature to complete and
barren unity only by draining it of imagination, and it is imagination
which enables the poet to find aesthetic unity in the two worlds of
sense and spirit, where the rest of us can see only conflict. There is a
little poem, by Walter Conrad Arensberg, which is to me a symbol of this
power of reflection which distinguishes the poetic imagination. It is
called _Voyage à L'Infine_:
The swan existing
Is like a song with an accompaniment
Imaginary.
Across the grassy lake,
Across the lake to the shadow of the willows
It is accompanied by an image,
--as by Debussy's
"Réflets dans l'eau."
The swan that is
Reflects
Upon the solitary water--breast to breast
With the duplicity:
"The other one!"
And breast to breast it is confused.
O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession!
It is accompanied by the image of itself
Alone.
At night
The lake is a wide silence,
Without imagination.
But why should poets assume, someone may object, that this mystic
answering of sense to spirit and of spirit to sense is to be discovered
by the imagination of none but poets? All men are made up of flesh and
spirit; do not the desires of all men, accordingly, point to the
spiritual and to the physical, exactly as do the poet's? In a sense;
yes; but on the other hand all men but the poet have an aim that is
clearly either physical or spiritual; therefore they do not stand poised
between the two worlds with the perfect balance of interests which marks
the poet. The philosopher and the man of religion recognize their goal
as a spiritual and ascetic one. If they concern themselves more than is
needful with the temporal and sensual, they feel that they are false to
their ideal. The scientist and the man of affairs, on the other hand,
are concerned with the physical; therefore most of the time they dismiss
consideration of the spiritual as being outside of their province. Of
course many persons would disagree with this last statement. The genius
of an Edison, they assert, is precisely like the genius of a poet. But
if this were true, we should be moved by the mechanism of a phonograph
just as we are moved by a poem, and we are not. We may be amazed by the
invention, and still find our thoughts tied to the physical world. It is
not the instrument, but the voice of an artist added to it that makes us
conscious of the two worlds of sense and spirit, reflecting one another.
Supposing that all this is true, what is gained by discovering, from a
consensus of poets' views, that the distinctive characteristic of the
poet is harmony of sense and spirit? Is not this so obvious as to be a
truism? It is perhaps so obvious that like all the truest things in the
world it is likely to be ignored unless insisted upon occasionally.
Certainly it has been ignored too frequently in the history of English
criticism. Whenever men of simpler aims than the poet have written
criticism, they have misread the issue in various ways, and have usually
ended by condemning the poet in so far as he diverged from their own
goal.
It is obvious that the moral obsession which has twisted so much of
English criticism is the result of a failure to grasp the real nature of
the poet's vitality. Criticism arose, with Gosson's _School of
Abuse_, as an attack upon the ethics of the poet by the puritan, who
had cut himself off from the joys of sense. Because champions of poetry
were concerned with answering this attack, the bulk of Elizabethan
criticism, that of Lodge, [Footnote: _Defense of Poetry, Musick and
Stage Plays._] Harrington, [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry._] Meres,
[Footnote: _Palladis Tamia._] Campion, [Footnote: _Observations in the
Art of English Poetry._] Daniel, [Footnote: _Defense of Rhyme._] and
even in lesser degree of Sidney, obscures the aesthetic problem by
turning it into an ethical one.
In the criticism of Sidney, himself a poet, one does find implied a
recognition of the twofold significance of the poet's powers. He asserts
his spiritual pre-eminence strongly, declaring that the poet, unlike the
scientist, is not bound to the physical world.[Footnote: "He is not
bound to any such subjection, as scientists, to nature." _Defense of
Poetry._] On the other hand he is clearly aware of the need for a
sensuous element in poetry, since by it, Sidney declares, the poet may
lead men by "delight" to follow the forms of virtue.
The next critic of note, Dryden, in his revulsion from the ascetic
character which the puritans would develop in the poet, swung too far to
the other extreme, and threw the poetic character out of balance by
belittling its spiritual insight. He did justice to the physical element
in poetry, defining poetic drama, the type of his immediate concern, as
"a just and lively image of human nature, in its actions, passions, and
traverses of fortune," [Footnote: _English Garner,_ III, 513.] but
he appears to have felt the ideal aspect of the poet's nature as merely
a negation of the sensual, so that he was driven to the absurdity of
recommending a purely mechanical device, rhyme, as a means of elevating
poetry above the sordid plane of "a bare imitation." In the eighteenth
century, Edmund Burke likewise laid too much stress upon the physical
aspect of the poet's nature, in accounting for the sublime in poetry as
originating in the sense of pain, and the beautiful as originating in
pleasure. Yet he comes closer than most critics to laying his finger
onthe particular point which distinguishes poets from philosophers,
namely, their dependence upon sensation.
With the single exception of Burke, however, the critics of the
eighteenth century labored under a misapprehension no less blind than
the moral obsession which twisted Elizabethan criticism. In the
eighteenth century critics were prone to confuse the spiritual element
in the poet's nature with intellectualism, and the sensuous element with
emotionalism. Such criticism tended to drive the poet either into an
arid display of wit, on the one hand, or into sentimental excess, on the
other, and the native English distrust of emotion led eighteenth century
critics to praise the poet when the intellect had the upper hand. But
surely poets have made it clear enough that the intellect is not the
distinctive characteristic of the poet. To be intelligent is merely to
be human. Intelligence is only a tool, poets have repeatedly insisted,
in their quarrel with philosophers. In proportion as one is intelligent
within one's own field, one excels, poets would admit. If one is
intelligent with respect to fisticuffs one is likely to become a good
prize-fighter, but no matter how far refinement of intelligence goes in
this direction, it will not make a pugilist into a poet. Intelligence
must belong likewise, in signal degree, to the great poet, but it is
neither one of the two essential elements in his nature. Augustan
critics starved the spiritual element in poetry, even while they
imagined that they were feeding it, for in sharpening his wit the poet
came no nearer expressing the "poor soul, the center of his sinful
earth" than when he reveled in emotion. We no longer believe that in the
most truly poetic nature the intelligence of a Pope is joined with the
emotionalism of a Rousseau. We believe that the spirituality of a
Crashaw is blent with the sensuousness of a Swinburne.
Nineteenth century criticism, since it is almost entirely the work of
poets, should not be thus at odds with the conception of the poet
expressed in poetry. But although nineteenth century prose criticism
moves in the right direction, it is not entirely adequate. The poet is
not at his best when he is working in a prose medium. He works too
consciously in prose, hence his intuitive flashes are not likely to find
expression. After he has tried to express his buried life there, he
himself is likely to warn us that what he has said "is well, is
eloquent, but 'tis not true." Even Shelley, the most successful of
poet-critics, gives us a more vivid comprehension of the poetical
balance of sense and spirit through his poet-heroes than through _The
Defense of Poetry_, for he is almost exclusively concerned, in that
essay, with the spiritual aspect of poetry. He expresses, in fact, the
converse of Dryden's view in that he regards the sensuous as negation or
dross merely. He asserts:
Few poets of the highest class have chosen to exhibit the
beauty of their conception in naked truth and splendor, and it
is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not
necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears.
The harmony in Shelley's nature which made it possible for his
contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding
generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning,
who says:
His noblest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception
of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in
the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between
them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the
connection of each with each than have been thrown by any
modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface
to the letters of Shelley (afterward found spurious).]
Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic
nature in his poetry than in his prose.
The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable
supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such
poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they
are introspective and analytical of their gift, are not in the highest
poetic mood. But when we are on the quest of criticism, instead of
poetry, we are frankly grateful for such verse. It is analytical enough
to be intelligible to us, and still intuitive enough to convince us of
its truthfulness. Wordsworth's _Prelude_ has been condemned in
certain quarters as "a talking about poetry, not poetry itself," but in
part, at least, the _Prelude_ is truly poetry. For this reason it
gives us more valuable ideas about the nature of poetry than does the
_Preface to the Lyrical Ballads_. If it is worth while to analyze
the poetic character at all, then poetry on the poet is invaluable to
us.
Perhaps it is too much for us to decide whether the picture of the poet
at which we have been gazing is worthy to be placed above Plato's
picture of the philosopher. The poet does not contradict Plato's charge
against him. His self-portrait bears out the accusation that he is
unable to see "the divine beauty--pure and clear and unalloyed, not
clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and
varieties of human life." [Footnote: _Symposium_, 212.] Plato would
agree with the analysis of the poetic character that Keats once
struggled with, when he exclaimed,
What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in
literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously--I mean
_Negative Capability_, that is, when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine
isolated verisimilitude caught from the Pentralium of mystery, from
being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge--With a great
poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather
obliterates all consideration.
Plato would agree with this,--all but the last sentence. Only, in place
of the phrase "negative capability," he would substitute "incapability,"
and reflect that the poet fails to see absolute beauty because he is not
content to leave the sensual behind and press on to absolute reality.
It may be that Plato is right, yet one cannot help wishing that sometime
a poet may arise of greater power of persuasion than any with whom we
have dealt, who will prove to Plato what he appears ever longing to be
convinced of, that absolute ideality is not a negation of the sensual,
and that poetry, in revealing the union of sense and spirit, is the
strongest proof of idealism that we possess. A poet may yet arise who
will prove that he is right in refusing to acknowledge that this world
is merely a surface upon which is reflected the ideals which constitute
reality and which abide in a different realm. The assumption in that
conception is that, if men have spiritual vision, they may apprehend
ideals directly, altogether apart from sense. On the contrary, the
impression given by the poet is that ideality constitutes the very
essence of the so-called physical world, and that this essence is
continually striving to express itself through refinement and remolding
of the outer crust of things. So, when the world of sense comes to
express perfectly the ideal, it will not be a mere representation of
reality. It will be reality. If he can prove this, we must acknowledge
that, not the rationalistic philosopher, but the poet, grasps reality
_in toto_.
However inconclusive his proof, the claims of the poet must fascinate
one with their implications. The two aspects of human life, the physical
and the ideal, focus in the poet, and the result is the harmony which is
art. The fact is of profound philosophical significance, surely, for
union of the apparent contradictions of the sensual and the spiritual
can only mean that idealism is of the essence of the universe. What is
the poetic metaphor but the revelation of an identical meaning in the
physical and spiritual world? The sympathetic reader of poetry cannot
but see the reflection of the spiritual in the sensual, and the sensual
in the spiritual, even as does the poet, and one, as the other, must be
by temperament an idealist.
INDEX
Addison, Joseph,
"A.E." (see George William Russell),
Aeschylus,
Agathon,
Akins, Zoe,
Alcaeus,
Aldrich, Anne Reeve,
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey,
Alexander, Hartley Burr,
Alexander, William,
Allston, Washington,
Ambercrombe, Lascelles,
Anderson, Margaret Steele,
Angelo, Michael,
Arensberg, Walter Conrad,
Aristotle,
Arnold, Edwin,
Arnold, Matthew,
his discontent;
on the poet's death;
inspiration;
loneliness; morality;
religion;
usefulness;
youth;
his sense of superiority.
Arnold, Thomas,
Asquith, Herbert,
Austin, Alfred,
Bacon, Josephine Dodge Daskam,
Baker, Karle Wilson,
Baudelaire, Charles Pierre,
Beatrice,
Beattie, James,
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell,
Beers, Henry A.,
Benét, Stephen Vincent,
Benét, William Rose,
Bennet, William,
Binyon, Robert Lawrence,
Blake, William,
later poets on;
on inspiration;
on the poet as truthteller;
on the poet's religion.
Blunden, Edmund,
Boccaccio,
Boker, George Henry,
Borrow, George,
Bowles, William Lisle,
Branch, Anna Hempstead,
Brawne, Fanny H.,
Bridges, Robert,
Brontë, Emily,
Brooke, Rupert,
Browne, T. E.,
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett,
appearance;
_Aurora Leigh_;
on Keats;
on the poet's age;
content with his own time;
democracy;
eyes;
habitat;
health,
humanitarianism,
inferiority to his creations,
inspiration,
love,
morals,
pain,
personality,
religion,
resentment at patronage,
self-consciousness,
self-expression,
sex,
usefulness,
other poets on,
Browning, Robert,
on fame,
on inspiration,
on the poet's beauty,
loneliness,
love,
morals,
persecutions,
pride,
religion,
self-expression,
sex,
superiority,
usefulness,
on Shakespeare,
on Shelley,
_Sordello_,
other poets on
Bryant, William Cullen
Buchanan, Robert
Bunker, John Joseph
Burke, Edmund
Burleigh, William Henry
Burnet, Dana
Burns, Robert,
his self-depreciation,
on the poet's caste,
habitat,
inspiration,
love of liberty,
morals, persecutions,
poverty,
superiority,
other poets on
Burton, Richard
Butler, Samuel
Byron, Lord,
his body,
escape from himself in poetry,
friendship with Shelley,
indifference to fame,
later poets on,
his morals,
his mother,
his religion,
self-portraits in verse,
superiority,
on Tasso
Camöens
Campbell, Thomas
Campion, Thomas
Candole, Alec de
Carlin, Francis
Carlyle, Thomas
Carman, Bliss
Carpenter, Rhys
Cary, Alice
Cary, Elisabeth Luther
Cassells, S. J.
Cavalcanti, Guido
Cawein, Madison
Cellini, Benvenuto
Cervantes
Chapman, George
Chatterton, Thomas
Chaucer, Geoffrey
Cheney, Annie Elizabeth
Chénièr, André
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Chivers, Thomas Holley
Clare, John
Clough, Arthur Hugh
Coleridge, Hartley
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor,
appearance;
on Blake;
on Chatterton;
friendship with Wordsworth;
on the poet's habitat;
health;
love;
morals;
reflection in nature;
religion;
youth;
usefulness;
later poets on
Collins, William,
Colonna, Vittoria,
Colvin, Sidney,
Conkling, Grace Hazard,
Cornwall, Barry (see Procter, Bryan Waller),
Cowper, William,
Cox, Ethel Louise,
Crabbe, George,
Crashaw, Richard,
Cratylus,
Dana, Richard Henry,
Daniel, Samuel,
D'Annunzio, Gabriele,
Dante,
G.L. Raymond on;
Oscar Wilde on;
Sara King Wiley on;
Dargan, Olive,
David,
Davidson, John,
Davies, William Henry,
Dermody, Thomas,
Descartes,
Dickinson, Emily,
Dionysodorus,
Dobell, Sidney,
Dobson, Austin,
Dommett, Alfred,
Donne, John,
Dowden, Edward,
Dowson, Ernest,
Drake, Joseph Rodman,
Drinkwater, John,
Druce, C.J.,
Dryden, John,
Dunbar, Paul Laurence,
Dunroy, William Reed,
Dunsany, Lord Edward,
Dyer, Sidney,
Ehrman, Max,
Elijah,
Eliot, Ebenezer,
Eliot, George,
Emerson, Ralph Waldo,
his contempt for the public;
his democracy;
his humility;
on inspiration;
on love of fame;
on the poet's divinity;
love;
morals;
poverty;
solitude;
usefulness
Euripedes,
Euthydemus,
Evans, Mrs. E.H.,
Fainier, C.H.,
Fairfield, S. L.,
Field, Eugene.,
Flecker, James Elroy,
Flint, F.S.,
French, Daniel Chester,
Freneau, Philip Morin,
Fuller, Frances,
Fuller, Metta,
Gage, Mrs. Frances,
Garnett, Richard,
Gibson, Wilfred Wilson,
Giddings, Franklin Henry,
Gilbert, Sir William Schwenek
Gilder, Richard Watson;
on Helen Hunt Jackson;
on Emma Lazarus;
on the poet's age;
blindness;
inspiration;
morality;
normality;
poverty
Gillman, James
Giltinan, Caroline
Goethe
Gosse, Edmund
Gosson, Stephen
Graves, Robert
Gray, Thomas
Grenfil, Julian
Griffith, William
Guiterman, Arthur
Hake, Thomas Gordon
Halleck, Shelley
Halpine, Charles Graham
Hardy, Thomas
Harris, Thomas Lake
Harrison, Birge
Hayne, Paul Hamilton
Hazlitt, William
Hemans, Felicia
Henderson, Daniel
Henley, William Ernest
Herbert, George
Herrick, Robert
Hewlett, Maurice
Hildreth, Charles Latin
Hill, H.,
Hilliard, George Stillman
Hillyer, Robert Silliman
Hoffman, C. F.
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson
Holland, Josiah Gilbert
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Homer
Hood, Thomas
Hooper, Lucy
"Hope, Lawrence" (see Violet
Nicolson)
Horne, Richard Hengest
Houghton, Lord
Houseman, Laurence
Hovey, Richard
Hubbard, Harvey
Hubner, Charles William
Hughes, John
Hugo, Victor
Hunt, Leigh
Ingelow, Jean
Jackson, Helen Hunt
Jameson, Mrs. Anna Brownell
Johnson, Donald F. Goold
Johnson, Lionel
Johnson, Robert Underwood,
Johnson, Rossiter
Johnson, Dr. Samuel
Jonson, Ben
Kaufman, Herbert
Keats, John;
his body;
on Burns;
Christopher North on;
on his desire for fame;
his egotism;
on Elizabethan poets;
on expression;
on the harmony of poets
Homer's blindness;
on his indifference to the public;
on inspiration;
later poets on Keats;
on love;
quarrel with philosophy;
on the poet's democracy,
gift of prophecy,
habitat,
morals,
persecutions,
unpoetical character,
unobtrusiveness,
usefulness
Keble, John
Kemble, Frances Anne
Kent, Charles
Kenyon, James Benjamin
Kerl, Simon
Khayyam, Omar
Kilmer, Joyce
Kingsley, Charles
Kipling, Rudyard
Knibbs, Harry Herbert
Lamb, Charles
Landor, Walter Savage;
on Byron;
confidence in immortality;
on female poets;
on Homer;
on intoxication and inspiration;
on the poet's age,
morals,
pride;
on poetry and reason;
on Shakespeare;
on Southey
Lang, Andrew
Lanier, Sidney
Larcom, Lucy
Laura
Lazarus, Emma
Ledwidge, Francis
Le Gallienne, Richard
Leonard, William Ellery
Lindsay, Vachel
Lockhart, John Gibson
Lodge, Thomas
Lombroso, Césare
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth;
his democracy;
on grief and poetry;
_Michael Angelo_;
on the poet's morals,
solitude;
on the savage poet;
on inspiration
Longinus
Lord, William W.
Low, Benjamin R. C.
Lowell, Amy
Lowell, James Russell;
on Burns;
on the poet's age,
divinity,
habitat,
inspiration,
usefulness
Lucan
Lucretius
Lytton, Bulwer, on André Chénier;
on the female poet;
on Milton;
on the poet's appearance,
fame,
persecution,
usefulness
McDonald, Carl
Mackaye, Percy
Maclean, L. E.
"Macleod, Fiona" (see William Sharp)
MacNiel, J. C.
Mann, Dorothea Lawrence
Mansfield, Richard
Map, Walter
Markham, Edwin
Marlowe, Christopher,
Alfred Noyes on,
Josephine Preston Peabody on,
Marquis, Don,
Masefield, John,
Massey, Gerald,
Masters, Edgar Lee,
Meres, Francis,
Meredith, George,
Meredith, Owen,
Meynell, Alice,
Meynell, Viola,
Middleton, Richard,
Millay, Edna St. Vincent,
Miller, Joaquin,
Milton, John,
Miriam,
Mitchell, L. E.,
Mitchell, Stewart
Mitford, Mary Russell,
Montgomery, James,
Moody, William Vaughan,
Moore, Thomas,
Morley, Christopher,
Morris, Lewis,
Morris, William,
Myers, Frederick W. H.
Naden, Constance, Nash, Thomas,
Neihardt, John Gneisenau,
Nero,
Nerval, Gerard de,
Newbolt, Henry,
Newman, Henry,
Newton, Sir Isaac,
Nicolson, Violet,
Nordau, Max Simon,
North, Christopher,
Noyes, Alfred,
O'Connor, Norreys Jephson,
Osborne, James Insley,
O'Sheel, Shaemus,
Otway, Thomas,
Pater, Walter,
Patmore, Coventry, on the
poet's expression,
indifference to fame,
love,
morals,
religion,
usefulness
Payne, John,
Peabody, Josephine Preston,
Percival, James Gates,
Percy, William Alexander,
Petrarch,
Phidias,
Phillips, Stephen,
Phillpotts, Eden,
Pierce, C. A.,
Plato,
_Ion_,
_Phaedo_
_Philebus_,
_Phaedrus_,
_Republic_,
_Symposium_,
Poe, Edgar Allan,
Pollock, Robert,
Pope, Alexander,
Pound, Ezra,
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth
Price, C. Augustus
Procter, Adelaide Anne
Procter, Bryan Cornwall
Rand, Theodore Harding
Raphael
Raymond, George Lansing
Reade, Thomas Buchanan
Realf, Richard
Reno, Lydia M.
Rice, Cale Young
Rice, Harvey
Riley, James Whitcomb
Rittenhouse, Jessie
Rives, Hallie Erven
Robbins, Reginald Chauncey
Roberts, Cecil
Roberts, Charles George Douglas
Robinson, Edwin Arlington
Robinson, Mary
Rossetti, Christina
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel,
on Chatterton,
on Dante,
on Marston,
on the poet's age,
expression,
inspiration,
love,
morals,
usefulness
Rousseau, Jean Jacques
Ruskin, John
Russell, George William
Ryan, Abram J.
Sampson, Henry Aylett
Sandburg, Carl
Sappho;
Alcaeus on,
modern poets on her genius,
on her passion
Savage, John
Saxe, John Godfrey
Scala, George Augustus
Schauffler, Robert Haven
Schiller, Johann Christoff Friedrich
Scott, Sir Walter
Seeger, Alan
Service, Robert
Shairp, Principal
Shakespeare, William
Sharp, William
Shelley, Percy Bysshe,
and Byron,
on female poets,
his hostility to the public,
his indifference to his body,
on Keats,
on the poet's early death,
habitat,
inspiration,
love,
madness,
loneliness,
morals,
persecutions,
poverty,
religion,
seership,
usefulness,
on prenatal life,
on Tasso
Shenstone, William
Sidney, Sir Philip
Sinclair, May
Smart, Christopher
Smith, Alexander,
Smith, J. Thorne, jr.,
Socrates,
Solomon,
Soran, Charles,
Southey, Robert,
Spenser, Edmund,
Sprague, E.L.,
Stedman, Edmund Clarence,
Stephens, James,
Stickney, Trumbull,
Stoddard, Charles Warren,
Sullivan, Sir Arthur,
Swinburne, Algernon,
chafing against moral restraints;
on Victor Hugo;
on Marston;
on his mother;
on the poet's age;
love of liberty;
morals;
parentage;
religion;
usefulness;
on Christina Rossetti;
on Sappho;
on Shelley
Symons, Arthur,
Taine, Hippolyte Adolph,
Tannahill, John,
Tasso, Torquato,
Taylor, Bayard,
Teasdale, Sara,
Tennyson, Alfred,
burlesque on inspiration in wine;
his contempt for the public;
on the poet's death;
expression;
inspiration;
intuitions;
love of liberty;
lovelessness;
morality;
pantheism;
persecution;
rank;
religion;
superiority to art;
usefulness
Tertullian, Thomas, Edith,
Thompson, Francis,
confidence in immortality;
humility;
on inspiration;
on love and poetry;
on Alice Meynell;
on Viola Meynell;
on the poet's body;
expression;
grief;
habitat;
loneliness;
morals;
youth
Thomson, James,
Thomson, James (B.V.),
his atheism;
on Mrs. Browning;
on inspiration;
on pessimistic poetry;
on Platonic love;
on Shelley;
on Tasso;
on Weltschmerz
Timrod, Henry,
Tolstoi, Count Leo,
Towne, Charles Hanson,
Trench, Herbert,
Tupper, Martin Farquhar,
Van Dyke, Henry,
Vergil,
Verlaine, Paul Marie,
Villon, François,
Viviani, Emilia,
Waddington, Samuel
Ware, Eugene
Watts-Dunton, Theodore
Wesley, Charles
West, James Harcourt
Wheelock, John Hall
White, Kirke
Whitman, Walt;
confidence in immortality;
democracy;
on expression;
on the poet's idleness,
inspiration,
morals,
normality,
protean nature,
love,
reconciling of man and nature;
on the poet-warrior;
his zest
Whittier, John Greenleaf
Wilde, Oscar, on Byron;
on Dante;
on Keats;
on love and art;
his morals;
on the poet's prophecy;
on the uselessness of art
Wiley, Sara King
Winter, William
Woodberry, George Edward;
apology;
on friendship; on the poet's love;
on inspiration;
on Shelley
Wordsworth, William;
confidence in immortality;
on female poets;
his friendship with Coleridge;
on James Hogg;
on inspiration;
Keats' annoyance with Wordsworth;
on love poetry;
on the peasant poet;
on the poet's democracy,
habitat,
morals,
religion,
solitude;
the _Prelude_;
on prenatal life;
quarrel with philosophy;
repudiation of inspiration through wine
Wright, Harold Bell
Yeats, William Butler
Young, Edmund