Elle est bien loin, elle pleure,
Le grand vent se lamente aussi . . .
Jules Laforgue, and Tristan Corbière in many of his poems, are nearer
to the "school of Donne" than any modern English poet. But poets more
classical than they have the same essential quality of transmuting ideas
into sensations, of transforming an observation into a state of mind.
Pour l'enfant, amoureux de cartes et d'estampes,
L'univers est égal à son vaste appétit.
Ah, que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes!
Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!
In French literature the great master of the seventeenth
century--Racine--and the great master of the nineteenth--Baudelaire--are
more like each other than they are like anyone else. The greatest two
masters of diction are also the greatest two psychologists, the most
curious explorers of the soul. It is interesting to speculate whether it
is not a misfortune that two of the greatest masters of diction in our
language, Milton and Dryden, triumph with a dazzling disregard of the
soul. If we continued to produce Miltons and Drydens it might not so
much matter, but as things are it is a pity that English poetry has
remained so incomplete. Those who object to the "artificiality" of
Milton or Dryden sometimes tell us to "look into our hearts and write."
But that is not looking deep enough; Racine or Donne looked into a good
deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the
nervous system, and the digestive tracts.
May we not conclude, then, that Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan, Herbert and
Lord Herbert, Marvell, King, Cowley at his best, are in the direct
current of English poetry, and that their faults should be reprimanded
by this standard rather than coddled by antiquarian affection? They have
been enough praised in terms which are implicit limitations because they
are "metaphysical" or "witty," "quaint" or "obscure," though at their
best they have not these attributes more than other serious poets. On
the other hand, we must not reject the criticism of Johnson (a dangerous
person to disagree with) without having mastered it, without having
assimilated the Johnsonian canons of taste. In reading the celebrated
passage in his essay on Cowley we must remember that by wit he clearly
means something more serious than we usually mean to-day; in his
criticism of their versification we must remember in what a narrow
discipline he was trained, but also how well trained; we must remember
that Johnson tortures chiefly the chief offenders, Cowley and Cleveland.
It would be a fruitful work, and one requiring a substantial book, to
break up the classification of Johnson (for there has been none since)
and exhibit these poets in all their difference of kind and of degree,
from the massive music of Donne to the faint, pleasing tinkle of
Aurelian Townshend--whose "Dialogue between a Pilgrim and Time" is one
of the few regrettable omissions from this excellent anthology.
[Footnote 2: "Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century":
Donne to Butler. Selected and edited, with an Essay, by Herbert J. C.
Grierson (Oxford: Clarendon Press. London: Milford. 6s. net).]