The following extracts from important critical discussions are
selected with reference to their bearing on two questions: Is metre
an essential or only an incidental element of poetry? and, What are
its functions in the total content and effect of poetry? The
student of the subject will do well to analyze the answers to the
second question, determining under how many aspects of the metrical
element they can be grouped.
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them
lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted
in man from childhood.... Next, there is the instinct for harmony and
rhythm, metres being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore,
starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special
aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry.
(ARISTOTLE: _Poetics_, iv. Butcher's translation, pp. 15, 17.)
Poetry, music, and dancing constitute in Aristotle a group by
themselves, their common element being imitation by means of
rhythm--rhythm which admits of being applied to words, sounds, and the
movements of the body. The history of these arts bears out the views we
find expressed in Greek writers upon the theory of music; it is a
witness to the primitive unity of music and poetry, and to the close
alliance of the two with dancing.... The intimate fusion of the three
arts afterward known as the "musical" arts--or rather we should perhaps
say, the alliance of music and dancing under the supremacy of
poetry--was exhibited even in the person of the artist. The office of
the poet as teacher of the chorus demanded a practical knowledge of all
that passed under the term "dancing," including steps, gestures,
attitudes, and the varied resources of rhythmical movement.... The poet,
lyric or dramatic, composed the accompaniment as well as wrote the
verses; and it was made a reproach against Euripides, who was the first
to deviate from the established usage, that he sought the aid of Iophon,
son of Sophocles, in the musical setting of his dramas. The very word
"poet" in classical times often implies the twofold character of poet
and musician, and in later writers is sometimes used, like our
"composer," in a strictly limited reference to music.
Aristotle does full justice to the force of rhythmic form and movement
in the arts of music and dancing. The instinctive love of melody and
rhythm is, again, one of the two causes to which he traces the origin of
poetry, but he lays little stress on this element in estimating the
finished products of the poetic art. In the _Rhetoric_ he observes that
if a sentence has metre it will be poetry; but this is said in a popular
way. It was doubtless the received opinion, but it is one which he twice
combats in the _Poetics_, insisting that it is not metrical form that
makes a poem....
The general question whether metre is necessary for poetical expression
has been raised by many modern critics and poets, and has sometimes been
answered in the negative, as by Sidney, Shelley, Wordsworth. It is,
however, worth observing that from Aristotle's point of view, which was
mainly one of observation, the question to be determined was rather as
to the vehicle or medium of literary _mimesis_; and so far as the
_mimesis_ doctrine is concerned, it is undeniable that some kinds of
imaginative subject-matter are better expressed in prose, some in verse,
and that Aristotle, who had before him experimental examples of writings
poetic in spirit, but not metrical in form, had sufficient grounds for
advocating an extension of meaning for the term _poietes_. But as
regards the _Art_ of Poetry, his reasoning does not lead us to conclude
that he would have reckoned the authors of prose dialogues or romances
among poets strictly so called. As Mr. Courthope truly says, "he does
not attempt to prove that metre is not a necessary accompaniment of the
higher conceptions of poetry," and he, "therefore, cannot be ranged with
those who support that extreme opinion." Still there would appear to be
some want of firmness in the position he takes up as to the place and
importance of metre. In his definition of tragedy (chap. vi. 2)
"embellished language" is included among the constituent elements of
tragedy; and the phrase is then explained to mean language that has the
twofold charm of metre (which is a branch of rhythm) and of melody. But
these elements are placed in a subordinate rank and are hardly treated
as essentials. They are in this respect not unlike scenery or
spectacular effect, which, though deduced by Aristotle from the
definition, is not explicitly mentioned in it. The essence of the poetry
is the "imitation"; the melody and the verse are the "seasoning" of the
language.... Aristotle, highly as he rates the æsthetic capacity of the
sense of hearing in his treatment of music, says nothing to show that he
values at its proper worth the power of rhythmical sound as factor in
poetry; and this is the more striking in a Greek, whose enjoyment of
poetry came through the ear rather than the eye, and for whom poetry was
so largely associated with music. After all, there can hardly be a
greater difference between two ways of saying the same thing than that
one is said in verse, the other in prose. There are some lyrics which
have lived and will always live by their musical charm, and by a strange
magic that lies in the setting of the words. We need not agree with a
certain modern school who would empty all poetry of poetical thought and
etherealize it till it melts into a strain of music; who sing to us we
hardly know of what, but in such a way that the echoes of the real
world, its men and women, its actual stir and conflict, are faint and
hardly to be discerned. The poetry, we are told, resides not in the
ideas conveyed, not in the blending of soul and sense, but in the sound
itself, in the cadence of the verse. Yet, false as this view may be, it
is not perhaps more false than that other which wholly ignores the
effect of musical sound and looks only to the thought that is conveyed.
Aristotle comes perilously near this doctrine.
(S. H. BUTCHER: _Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art_. pp.
138-147.)
It is not riming and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long
gown maketh an advocate; who, though he pleaded in armor, should be an
advocate and no soldier. But it is that feigning notable images of
virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful teaching which must
be the right describing note to know a poet by; although, indeed, the
senate of poets hath chosen verse as their fittest raiment, meaning, as
in matter they passed all in all, so in manner to go beyond them: not
speaking (table-talk fashion, or like men in a dream) words as they
chanceably fell from the mouth, but poyzing each syllable of each word
by just proportion according to the dignity of the subject....
It is already said (and as I think, truly said) it is not riming and
versing that maketh poesy.... But yet, presuppose it were inseparable
(as, indeed, it seemeth Scaliger judgeth) truly it were an inseparable
commendation. For if _oratio_ next to _ratio_, speech next to reason, be
the greatest gift bestowed upon mortality, that cannot be praiseless,
which doth most polish that blessing of speech, which considers each
word, not only (as a man may say) by his forcible quality, but by his
measured quantity, carrying even in themselves a harmony, without
(perchance) number, measure, order, proportion, be in our time grown
odious. But lay aside the just praise it hath, by being the only fit
speech for music (music, I say, the most divine striker of the senses);
thus much is undoubtedly true, that if reading be foolish, without
remembering, memory being the only treasurer of knowledge, those words
which are fittest for memory are likewise most convenient for knowledge.
Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory,
the reason is manifest. The words (besides their delight, which hath a
great affinity to memory), being so set, as one word cannot be lost, but
the whole work fails, which accuseth itself, calleth the remembrance
back to itself, and so most strongly confirmeth it. Besides, one word
so as it were begetting another, as be it in rime or measured verse, by
the former a man shall have a near guess to the follower.... So that,
verse being in itself sweet and orderly, and being best for memory, the
only handle of knowledge, it must be in jest that any man can speak
against it.
(SIR PHILIP SIDNEY: _An Apologie for Poetrie_.)
Versification, or the art of modulating his numbers, is indispensably
necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the understanding is
enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose.
But the poet has this peculiar superiority, that to all the powers which
the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the
faculty of joining music with reason, and of acting at once upon the
senses and the passions. I suppose there are few who do not feel
themselves touched by poetical melody, and who will not confess that
they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed
by different sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order
than another. The perception of harmony is, indeed, conferred upon men
in degrees very unequal; but there are none who do not perceive it, or
to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds cannot give delight.
(SAMUEL JOHNSON: _The Rambler_, No. 86.)
Various causes might be pointed out why, when the style is manly, and
the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will long
continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who proves the
extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. The end of poetry is
to produce excitement in coexistence with an overbalance of pleasure;
but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and irregular state of
the mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state, succeed each other
in accustomed order.... Now the co-presence of something regular,
something to which the mind has been accustomed in various moods and in
a less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and
restraining the passion by an intertexture of ordinary feeling, and of
feeling not strictly and necessarily connected with the passion. This is
unquestionably true; and hence, though the opinion will at first appear
paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest language, in a certain
degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a sort of half-consciousness
of unsubstantial existence over the whole composition, there can be
little doubt but that more pathetic situations and sentiments--that is,
those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them--may
be endured in metrical composition, especially in rime, than in
prose.... This opinion may be further illustrated by appealing to the
reader's own experience of the reluctance with which he comes to the
reperusal of the distressful parts of _Clarissa Harlowe_, or the
_Gamester_; while Shakspere's writings, in the most pathetic scenes,
never act upon us as pathetic beyond the bounds of pleasure--an effect
which, in a much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to
be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable
surprise from the metrical arrangement.[56] On the other hand (what it
must be allowed will much more frequently happen), if the poet's words
should be incommensurate with the passion, and inadequate to raise the
reader to a height of desirable excitement, then (unless the poet's
choice of his metre has been grossly injudicious), in the feelings of
pleasure which the reader has been accustomed to connect with metre in
general, and in the feeling, whether cheerful or melancholy, which he
has been accustomed to connect with that particular movement of metre,
there will be found something which will greatly contribute to impart
passion to the words, and to effect the complex end which the poet
proposes to himself.
If I had undertaken a systematic defence of the theory here maintained,
it would have been my duty to develop the various causes upon which the
pleasure received from metrical language depends. Among the chief of
these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to
those who have made any of the Arts the object of accurate reflection;
namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of
similitude in dissimilitude. This principle is the great spring of the
activity of our minds, and their chief feeder.... It would not be a
useless employment to apply this principle to the consideration of
metre, and to show that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure,
and to point out in what manner that pleasure is produced. But my limits
will not permit me to enter upon this subject, and I must content myself
with a general summary.
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity;
the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the
tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which
was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does
itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition
generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but
the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various
causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any
passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will,
upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. If Nature be thus cautious
to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the Poet ought
to profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take
care that, whatever passions he communicates to his reader, those
passions, if his reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be
accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. Now the music of harmonious
metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind
association of pleasure which has been previously received from works of
rime or metre of the same or similar construction, an indistinct
perception perpetually renewed of language closely resembling that of
real life, and yet, in the circumstance of metre, differing from it so
widely--all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight,
which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling
always found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper
passions. This effect is always produced in pathetic and impassioned
poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with
which the Poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a
principal source of the gratification of the reader. All that it is
necessary to say, however, upon this subject, may be effected by
affirming, what few persons will deny, that of two descriptions, either
of passions, manners, or characters, each of them equally well executed,
the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be read a
hundred times where the prose is read once.
(WORDSWORTH: Preface to the _Lyrical Ballads_, 2d ed.)
The true question must be,[57] whether there are not modes of
expression, a construction, and an order of sentences, which are in
their fit and natural place in a serious prose composition, but would be
disproportionate and heterogeneous in metrical poetry; and, _vice
versa_, whether in the language of a serious poem there may not be an
arrangement both of words and sentences, and a use and selection of
(what are called) figures of speech, both as to their kind, their
frequency, and their occasions, which on a subject of equal weight would
be vicious and alien in correct and manly prose. I contend that in both
cases this unfitness of each for the place of the other frequently will
and ought to exist. And, first, from the origin of metre. This I would
trace to the balance in the mind effected by the spontaneous effort
which strives to hold in check the workings of passion. It might be
easily explained likewise in what manner this salutary antagonism is
assisted by the very state which it counteracts; and how this balance
of antagonists became organized into metre (in the usual acceptation of
that term) by a supervening act of the will and judgment, consciously
and for the foreseen purpose of pleasure. Assuming these principles as
the data of our argument, we deduce from them two legitimate conditions,
which the critic is entitled to expect in every metrical work. First,
that as the elements of metre owe their existence to a state of
increased excitement, so the metre itself should be accompanied by the
natural language of excitement. Secondly, that as these elements are
formed into metre artificially, by a voluntary act, with the design and
for the purpose of blending delight with emotion, so the traces of
present volition should throughout the metrical language be
proportionally discernible....
Secondly, I argue from the effects of metre. As far as metre acts in and
for itself, it tends to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of
the general feelings and of the attention. This effect it produces by
the continued excitement of surprise, and by the quick reciprocations of
curiosity still gratified and still re-excited, which are too slight
indeed to be at any moment objects of distinct consciousness, yet become
considerable in their aggregate influence. As a medicated atmosphere, or
as wine during animated conversation, they act powerfully, though
themselves unnoticed. Where, therefore, correspondent food and
appropriate matter are not provided for the attention and feelings thus
roused, there must needs be disappointment felt;--like that of leaping
in the dark from the last step of a staircase, when we had prepared our
muscles for a leap of three or four.
The discussion on the powers of metre, in the Preface, is highly
ingenious, and touches at all points on truth. But I cannot find any
statement of its powers considered abstractly and separately. On the
contrary, Mr. Wordsworth seems always to estimate metre by the powers
which it exerts during (and, as I think, in consequence of) its
combination with other elements of poetry. Thus the previous difficulty
is left unanswered, what the elements are with which it must be combined
in order to produce its own effects to any pleasurable purpose.... For
any poetic purposes, metre resembles (if the aptness of the simile may
excuse its meanness) yeast, worthless or disagreeable by itself, but
giving vivacity and spirit to the liquor with which it is proportionally
combined....
Metre in itself is simply a stimulant of the attention, and therefore
excites the question, Why is the attention to be thus stimulated? Now
the question cannot be answered by the pleasure of the metre itself; for
this we have shown to be conditional, and dependent on the
appropriateness of the thoughts and expressions to which the metrical
form is superadded. Neither can I conceive any other answer that can be
rationally given, short of this: I write in metre, because I am about to
use a language different from that of prose....
Thirdly, I deduce the position from all the causes elsewhere assigned
which render metre the proper form of poetry, and poetry imperfect and
defective without metre. Metre, therefore, having been connected with
poetry most often, and by a peculiar fitness, whatever else is combined
with metre must, though it be not itself essentially poetic, have
nevertheless some property in common with poetry, as an intermedium of
affinity.
(COLERIDGE: _Biographia Literaria_, chap. xviii.)
In the youth of the world, men dance and sing and imitate natural
objects, observing in these actions, as in all others, a certain rhythm
or order. And, although all men observe a similar, they observe not the
same order, in the motions of the dance, in the melody of the song, in
the combinations of language, in the series of their imitations of
natural objects. For there is a certain order or rhythm belonging to
each of these classes of mimetic representation, from which the hearer
and the spectator receive an intenser and purer pleasure than from any
other: the sense of an approximation to this order has been called taste
by modern writers....
Language, color, form, and religious and civil habits of action are all
the instruments and materials of poetry; and they may be called poetry
by that figure of speech which considers the effect as a synonym of the
cause. But poetry in a more restricted sense expresses those
arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are
created by that imperial faculty whose throne is curtained within the
invisible nature of man. And this springs from the nature itself of
language, which is a more direct representation of the actions and
passions of our internal being, and is susceptible of more various and
delicate combinations than color, form, or motion, and is more plastic
and obedient to the control of that faculty of which it is the
creation.... Sounds as well as thoughts have relation both between each
other and towards that which they represent, and a perception of the
order of those relations has always been found connected with a
perception of the order of the relations of thoughts. Hence the language
of poets has ever affected a certain uniform and harmonious recurrence
of sound, without which it were not poetry, and which is scarcely less
indispensable to the communication of its influence than the words
themselves, without reference to that peculiar order.... An observation
of the regular mode of the recurrence of harmony in the language of
poetical minds, together with its relation to music, produced metre, or
a certain system of traditional forms of harmony and language. Yet it is
by no means essential that a poet should accommodate his language to
this traditional form, so that the harmony, which is its spirit, be
observed.
(SHELLEY: _A Defence of Poetry_.)
Poetry, in its matter and form, is natural imagery or feeling, combined
with passion and fancy. In its mode of conveyance, it combines the
ordinary use of language with musical expression. There is a question of
long standing in what the essence of poetry consists, or what it is that
determines why one set of ideas should be expressed in prose, another in
verse. Milton has told us his idea of poetry in a single line:
"Thoughts that voluntary move
Harmonious numbers."
As there are certain sounds that excite certain movements, and the song
and dance go together, so there are, no doubt, certain thoughts that
lead to certain tones of voice, or modulations of sound, and change "the
words of Mercury into the songs of Apollo." ... The jerks, the breaks,
the inequalities and harshnesses of prose are fatal to the flow of a
poetical imagination, as a jolting road or a stumbling horse disturbs
the reverie of an absent man. But poetry "makes these odds all even." It
is the music of language, answering to the music of the mind, untying,
as it were, "the secret soul of harmony." Wherever any object takes such
a hold of the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it,
melting the heart in tenderness, or kindling it to a sentiment of
enthusiasm; wherever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed
on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, to
bring all other objects into accord with it, and to give the same
movement of harmony, sustained and continuous, or gradually varied,
according to the occasion, to the sounds that express it--this is
poetry. The musical in sound is the sustained and continuous; the
musical in thought is the sustained and continuous also. There is a near
connection between music and deep-rooted passion. Mad people sing. As
often as articulation passes naturally into intonation, there poetry
begins.... It is to supply the inherent defect of harmony in the
customary mechanism of language, to make the sound an echo to the sense,
when the sense becomes a sort of echo to itself--to mingle the tide of
verse, "the golden cadences of poetry," with the tide of feeling,
flowing and murmuring as it flows--in short, to take the language of the
imagination from off the ground; and enable it to spread its wings where
it may indulge its own impulses:
"Sailing with supreme dominion
Through the azure deep of air,"
without being stopped, or fretted, or diverted with the abruptnesses and
petty obstacles, and discordant flats and sharps of prose, that poetry
was invented. It is to common language what springs are to a carriage,
or wings to feet. In ordinary speech we arrive at a certain harmony by
the modulations of the voice; in poetry the same thing is done
systematically by a regular collocation of syllables. It has been well
observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a
subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose.... An
excuse might be made for rime in the same manner. It is but fair that
the ear should linger on the sounds that delight it, or avail itself of
the same brilliant coincidence and unexpected recurrence of syllables,
that have been displayed in the invention and collocation of images. It
is allowed that rime assists the memory.... But if the jingle of names
assists the memory, may it not also quicken the fancy?
(WILLIAM HAZLITT: _On Poetry in General_.)
With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by which verses
ought to be modulated, and oneness of impression diversely produced, it
has been contended by some that poetry need not be written in verse at
all; that prose is as good a medium, provided poetry be conveyed through
it, and that to think otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or
form with essence. But the opinion is a prosaical mistake. Fitness and
unfitness for _song_, or metrical excitement, just make all the
difference between a poetical and prosaical subject; and the reason why
verse is necessary to the form of poetry is that the perfection of
poetical spirit demands it--that the circle of its enthusiasm, beauty,
and power is incomplete without it. I do not mean that a poet can never
show himself a poet in prose; but that being one, his desire and
necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he were unable to do
so, he would not and could not deserve his title. Verse to the true poet
is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and a difficulty. It is a help.
It springs from the same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is
necessary to their satisfaction and effect.... Verse is the final proof
to the poet that his mastery over his art is complete. It is the
shutting up of his powers in "_measureful_ content"; the answer of form
to his spirit; of strength and ease to his guidance.... Verse, in short,
is that finishing, and rounding, and "tuneful planeting" of the poet's
creations which is produced of necessity by the smooth tendencies of
their energy or inward working, and the harmonious dance into which they
are attracted round the orb of the beautiful. Poetry, in its complete
sympathy with beauty, must of necessity leave no sense of the beautiful,
and no power over its forms, unmanifested; and verse flows as inevitably
from this condition of its integrity as other laws of proportion do from
any other kind of embodiment of beauty....
Every poet, then, is a versifier; every fine poet an excellent one; and
he is the best whose verse exhibits the greatest amount of strength,
sweetness, straightforwardness, unsuperfluousness, variety, and
oneness;--oneness, that is to say, consistency in the general
impression, metrical and moral; and variety, or every pertinent
diversity of tone and rhythm, in the process.... It is thus that
versification itself becomes part of the sentiment of a poem, and
vindicates the pains that have been taken to show its importance. I know
of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry; no poetry
of a mean order accompanied with verse of the highest.
(LEIGH HUNT: _What is Poetry?_ Cook ed., pp. 37-40, 61.)
No literary expression can, properly speaking, be called poetry that is
not in a certain deep sense emotional, whatever may be its
subject-matter, concrete in its method and its diction, rhythmical in
movement, and artistic in form.... That poetry must be metrical or even
rhythmical in movement, however, is what some have denied. Here we touch
at once the very root of the subject.... While prose requires
intellectual life and emotional life, poetry seems to require not only
intellectual life and emotional life but rhythmic life.... Unless the
rhythm of any metrical passage is so vigorous, so natural, and so free
that it seems as though it could live, if need were, by its rhythm
alone, has that passage any right to exist? and should it not, if the
substance is good, be forthwith demetricized and turned into prose? ...
Aristotle ignored, and Plato slighted, the importance of versification
(though Plato on one occasion admitted that he who did not know rhythm
could be called neither musician nor poet).... On the whole, however,
the theory that versification is not an indispensable requisite of a
poem seems to have become nearly obsolete in our time. Perhaps, indeed,
many critics would now go so far in the contrary direction as to say
with Hegel (_Æsthetik_, iii. p. 289) that "metre is the first and only
condition absolutely demanded by poetry, yea even more necessary than a
figurative picturesque diction."
(THEODORE WATTS: Article on "Poetry" in _Encyclopædia Britannica_.)
Verse-rhythm in words is the imposition of a _sensible_ order on what
naturally and normally has only a _logical_ order; and there is piquancy
in the feeling that so little is this ideal control a fettering
instrument, that each order seems to gain verve and spontaneity from the
other, or rather from the latent sense that the other, though present
and operative, is powerless to hamper it. Much more important, however,
is it to notice how the sense that one single thing--the word-series--is
lending itself to this joint dominance may take the form of a sort of
transfigured surprise. (The root-principle here involved is the old one
of "unity in variety," the _single_ line of words, "dominated at once by
the idea which they express in their grammatical connection and by their
metrical adjustment," clearly possessing _two_ independent functions or
aspects. See the fuller discussion of "The Sound-element in Verse," in
chapter xix. of _The Power of Sound_.) ... When, as in verse, the sounds
are pointedly addressed _both_ to the ear and to the understanding, the
rarity of the combination of aspects contributes a strain of feeling
partly akin to that with which we follow an exhibition of skill, and
partly to that with which we receive an unexpected gratuity....
Nor is this all. Rhythm perpetually not only transfigures the poetical
expression of an idea, but makes the existence of that expression
possible. This is tolerably obvious in the case of what is often called
_par excellence_ poetical language--language which keeps clear of
prosaic homeliness and prosaic precision and of technical and abstract
terms, and confines itself to a more picturesque and loftier
vocabulary.... Clearly it is the rarity of rhythmic, as compared with
non-rhythmic, speech that supports such rarity of poetic as compared
with non-poetic diction; that is to say, verse, being in one
respect--namely, its effect on the ear--a marked exception from ordinary
language, thereby establishes for itself the means of being exceptional,
without seeming unnatural, in other ways....
... In dwelling on the non-reasonable part in poetical beauty, I am in
no way committed to the assertion that all its constituents are excluded
from prose, but only to the assertion that the metrical form makes a
difference of kind. It cannot be for nothing that the very idea of
"poetical prose" inspires dread; and the instances of prose-writing
where we find delight of the intangible and non-reasonable kind are
exceptions that only prove the rule. One has but to test by
self-examination the living force of words in a specimen of verse and of
poetical prose which may respectively seem to oneself first-rate of
their kind. For such typical passages may often be regarded as fairly on
a par in respect of the ideas and emotions which they reasonably
express; and the prose may unquestionably further resemble the poetry in
a certain subtle individuality of life in its more prominent words, so
far as this life can be quickened in them by the idea itself, aided by
such qualities of sound-arrangement as are possible apart from metre. So
far the poetical merits of the respective passages may be equal; yet
only one of them is Poetry.... Language, which in prose does little more
than transmit thought, like clear glass, becomes--even as that
becomes--by art's adjustments and the moulding of measured form, a lens,
where the thought takes fire as it passes. The poet speaks through a
medium which seems to intensify the point and to extend the range of
what he would tell us by some power outside his own volition. Such a
power, in fact, a rhythmic order, in its fundamental appeal to human
nerves, literally is.... The _ictus_ of the verse comes upon us as the
operative force which shocks the words into their unwonted life.
... In considering the total contribution of metre to imaginative
language, it is impossible to overlook the quality of _permanence_. I do
not mean permanence merely in the sense that metrical words live in the
memory.... This is, of course, a most important fact; but I am here
dealing only with elements of effect that enter into the actual moment
of enjoyment.... It is a sense of combined parts, and their
indispensableness one to another, which gives us a sense of permanence
in an arch as compared with a casual heap of stones; it is a similar
indispensableness which gives to metrical language an air of permanence
impossible even to the most harmonious sentence whose sounds conform to
no genuine scheme. And again, in the case of this constituent as of the
others, we have no difficulty in seeing that its influence is really a
joint one of sound and sense--that, though founded in the nature of
metrical sound as such, it is not merely a sound-quality superposed _ab
extra_ on the intelligible beauty of the words, but depends for its
existence on their intelligible character.... We cannot glory in the
enshrining for memory of things that we do not care to remember. But for
that which is of true spiritual significance the fairly-fitted body of
sound is greeted as the inevitable investiture; and thus justified and
quickened, the strength of the mutually indispensable parts seems no
longer that of mere structure but of organic life.
(EDMUND GURNEY: Essay on "Poets, Critics, and Class-Lists," in _Tertium
Quid_, vol. ii. pp. 162-179, _passim_.)
Why have poets always written in metre? The answer is, Because the laws
of artistic expression oblige them to do so. When the poet has been
inspired from without in the way in which we saw Scott was inspired to
conceive the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_--that is to say, when he has
found his subject-matter in an idea, universally striking to the
imagination, when he has received this into his own imagination, and has
given it a new and beautiful form of life there, then he will seek to
express his conception through a vehicle of language harmonizing with
his own feelings and the nature of the subject, and this kind of
language is called verse. For example, when Marlowe wishes to represent
the emotions of Faustus, after he has called up the phantom of Helen of
Troy, it is plain that some very rapturous form of expression is needed
to convey an adequate idea of such famous beauty. Marlowe rises to the
occasion in those "mighty lines" of his:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?"
But it is certain that he could only have ventured on the sublime
audacity of saying that a face launched ships and burned towers by
escaping from the limits of ordinary language, and conveying his
metaphor through the harmonious and ecstatic movements of rhythm and
metre....
I think Wordsworth's analysis of emotion is clearly wrong. The reason
why the harrowing descriptions of Richardson are simply painful, while
Shakspere's tragic situations are pleasurable, is that the imagination
shrinks from dwelling on ideas so closely imitated from real objects as
the scenes in _Clarissa Harlowe_, but contemplates without excess of
pain the situation in _Othello_, for example, because the imitation is
poetical and ideal. Prose is used by Richardson because his novel
professedly resembles a situation of real life; metre is needed by
Shakspere to make the ideal life of his drama real to the imagination.
Wordsworth, if I may say so, has put the poetical cart before the
horse....
The propriety of poetical expression is the test and the touch-stone of
the justice of poetical conception.... Poetry lies in the invention of
the right metrical form--be it epic, dramatic, lyric, or satiric--for
the expression of some idea universally interesting to the imagination.
When the form of metrical expression seems _natural_--natural, that is,
to the genius of the poet and the inherent character of the
subject--then the subject-matter will have been rightly conceived....
Apply this test of what is natural in metrical expression to any
composition claiming to be poetically inspired, and you will be able to
decide whether it fulfils the universal conditions of poetical life, or
whether it is one of those phantoms, or, as Bacon calls them, idols of
the imagination, which vanish as soon as the novelty of their appearance
has exhausted its effect. For instance, the American poet, Walt Whitman,
announces his theme, and asks for the sympathy of the reader in these
words:
"Oneself I sing, a simple, separate person,
Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En Masse.
Poets to come, orators, singers, musicians to come,
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than
before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me!..."
To this appeal I think the reader may reply: The subject you have chosen
is certainly an idol of the imagination. For if you had anything of
universal interest to say about yourself, you could say it in a way
natural to one of the metres, or metrical movements, established in the
English language. What you call metre bears precisely the same relation
to these universal laws of expression, as the Mormon church and the
religion of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young bear to the doctrines of
Catholic Christendom.[58] ...
Why do we so often find men in these days, either using metre ... where
they ought to have expressed themselves in prose, or expressing
themselves in verse in a style so far remote from the standard of
diction established in society that they fail to touch the heart? I
think the explanation of this curious phenomenon is that, though metre
can only properly be used for the expression of universal ideas, there
is in modern society an eccentric or monastic principle at work, which
leads men to pervert metre into a luxurious instrument for the
expression of merely private ideas.
(WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE: _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, pp. 71-83.)
Language is colloquial and declarative in our ordinary speech, and on
its legs for common use and movement. Only when it takes wings does it
become poetry. As the poet, touched by emotion, rises to enthusiasm and
imaginative power or skill, his speech grows _rhythmic_, and thus puts
on the attribute that distinguishes it from every other mode of artistic
expression--the guild-mark which, rightly considered, establishes the
nature of the thing itself.... Our new empiricism, following where
intuition leads the way, comprehends the function of _vibrations_: it
perceives that every movement of matter, seized upon by universal force,
is _vibratory_; that vibrations, and nothing else, convey through the
body the look and voice of nature to the soul; that thus alone can one
incarnate individuality address its fellow; that, to use old Bunyan's
imagery, these vibrations knock at the ear-gate, and are visible to the
eye-gate, and are sentient at the gates of touch of the living temple.
The word describing their action is in evidence; they "thrill" the body,
they thrill the soul, both of which respond with subjective,
interblending vibrations, according to the keys, the wave-lengths, of
their excitants. Thus it is absolutely true that what Buxton Forman
calls "idealized language,"--that is, speech which is imaginative and
rhythmical,--goes with emotional thought; and that words exert a
mysterious and potent influence, thus chosen and assorted, beyond their
normal meanings....
Aside from the vibratory mission of rhythm, its little staff of
adjuvants, by the very discipline and limitations which they impose,
take poetry out of the plane of common speech, and make it an art which
lifts the hearer to its own unusual key. Schiller writes to Goethe that
"rhythm, in a dramatic work, treats all characters and all situations
according to one law.... In this manner it forms the atmosphere for the
poetic creation. The more material part is left out, for only what is
spiritual can be borne by this thin element." In real, that is,
spontaneous minstrelsy, the fittest assonance, consonance, time, even
rime, ... come of themselves with the imaginative thought.... Such is
the test of genuineness, the underlying principle being that the
masterful words of all poetic tongues are for the most part in both
their open and consonantal sounds related to their meanings, so that
with the inarticulate rhythm of impassioned thought we have a
correspondent verbal rhythm for its vehicle. The whole range of poetry
which is vital, from the Hebrew psalms and prophecies, in their original
text and in our great English version, to the Georgian lyrics and
romances and the Victorian idyls, confirms the statement of Mill that
"the deeper the feeling, the more characteristic and decided the
rhythm." The rapture of the poet governs the tone and accent of his
"high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted."
(EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN: _The Nature and Elements of Poetry_, pp.
51-55.)
We agree, then, to call by the name of poetry that form of art which
uses rhythm to attain its ends, just as we call by the name of flying
that motion which certain animals attain by the use of wings; that the
feelings roused by poetry can be roused by unrhythmic order of words,
and that rhythmic order of words is often deplorably bad art, or
"unpoetic," have as little to do with the case as the fact that a
greyhound speeding over the grass gives the spectator quite the
exhilaration and sense of lightness and grace which is roused by the
flight of a bird, and the fact that an awkward fowl makes itself
ridiculous in trying to fly, have to do with the general proposition
that flying is a matter of wings.... As a matter of fact, all writers on
poetry take rhythm for granted until some one asks why it is necessary;
whereupon considerable discussion, and the protest signed by a
respectable minority, but a minority after all, that rhythm is not an
essential condition of the poetic art. This discussion, as every one
knows, has been lively and at times bitter. A patient and comprehensive
review of it in a fairly impartial spirit has led to the conclusion,
first, that no test save rhythm has been proposed which can be put to
real use, even in theory, not to mention the long reaches of a
historical and comparative study; secondly, that all defenders of the
poem in prose are more or less contradictory and inconsistent, making
confusion between theory and practice; and thirdly, that advocates of a
rhythmic test, even in abstract definition, seem to have the better of
the argument....
All reports of primitive singing, that is, of singing among races on a
low plane of culture, make rhythm a wholly insistent element of the
verse.... Rhythm is obscured or hidden by declamation only in times when
the eye has usurped the functions of the ear, and when a highly
developed prose makes the accented rhythm of poetry seem either
old-fashioned or a sign of childhood. Not that one wishes to restore a
sing-song reading, but rather a recognition of metrical structure, of
those subtle effects in rhythm which mean so much in the poet's art;
verse, in a word, particularly lyric verse, must not be read as if it
were prose. Dramatic verse is a difficult problem.... For in drama one
wishes nowadays to hear not rhythm, but the thought, the story, the
point.... As thought recedes, as one comes nearer to those primitive
emotions which were untroubled by thought, they get expression more and
more in cadenced tones. And again, this cadenced emotional expression,
as it grows stronger, grows wider; the barriers of irony and reserve,
which keep a modern theatre tearless in the face of Lear's most pathetic
utterance, break down; first, as one recedes from modern conditions,
comes the sympathetic emotion of the spectators expressed in sighs and
tears; ... then comes the partial activity of the spectators by their
deputed chorus; and at last the throng of primitive times, common
emotion in common expression, with no spectators, no audience, no
reserve or comment of thought,--for thought is absorbed in the
perception and action of communal consent; and here, by all evidence,
rhythm rules supreme....
If, now, the curve of evolution in Aryan verse begins with an absolutely
strict rhythm and alternate emphasis of syllables, often, as in Iranian,
to the neglect of logical considerations; if the course of poetry is to
admit logical considerations more and more, forcing in at least one case
the abandoning of movable accent and the agreement of verse-emphasis
with syllabic-emphasis, an undisputed fact; if poetry, too, first shakes
off the steps of dancing, then the notes of song, finally the strict
scanning of the verse, until now recited poetry is triumphantly logical,
with rhythm as a subconscious element; if, finally, this process exactly
agrees with the gradual increase of thought over emotion, with the
analogous increase of solitary poetry over gregarious poetry,--then,
surely, one has but to trace back this curve of evolution, and to
project it into prehistoric conditions, in order to infer with something
very close to certitude that rhythm is the primal fact in the beginnings
of the poetic art....
The hold of rhythm upon modern poetry, even under conditions of analytic
and intellectual development which have unquestionably worked for the
increased importance of prose, is a hold not to be relaxed, and for good
reason. The reason is this. In rhythm, in sounds of the human voice,
timed to movements of the human body, mankind first discovered that
social consent which brought the great joys and the great pains of life
into a common utterance.... The mere fact of utterance is social;
however solitary his thought, a poet's utterance must voice this consent
of man with man, and his emotion must fall into rhythm, the one and
eternal expression of consent. This, then, is why rhythm will not be
banished from poetry so long as poetry shall remain emotional utterance;
for rhythm is not only sign and warrant of a social contract stronger,
deeper, vaster, than any fancied by Rousseau, but it is the expression
of a human sense more keen even than the fear of devils and the love of
gods--the sense and sympathy of kind.[59]
(Francis B. Gummere: _The Beginnings of Poetry_, chap. ii, "Rhythm as
the Essential Fact of Poetry." Pp. 30, 31, 82-85, 114, 115.)