There was a naughty BoyAnd a naughty boy was heHe ran away to ScotlandThe people for to seeThen he foundThat the groundWas as hard,That a yardWas as long,That a songWas as merry,That a cherryWas as red—That leadWas as weighty,That fourscoreWas as eighty,That a doorWas as woodenAs in England—So he stood in his shoesAnd he wonder’d,He wonder’d,He stood in his shoesAnd he wonder’d.
There was a naughty BoyAnd a naughty boy was heHe ran away to ScotlandThe people for to seeThen he foundThat the groundWas as hard,That a yardWas as long,That a songWas as merry,That a cherryWas as red—That leadWas as weighty,That fourscoreWas as eighty,That a doorWas as woodenAs in England—So he stood in his shoesAnd he wonder’d,He wonder’d,He stood in his shoesAnd he wonder’d.
There was a naughty BoyAnd a naughty boy was heHe ran away to ScotlandThe people for to seeThen he foundThat the groundWas as hard,That a yardWas as long,That a songWas as merry,That a cherryWas as red—That leadWas as weighty,That fourscoreWas as eighty,That a doorWas as woodenAs in England—
So he stood in his shoesAnd he wonder’d,He wonder’d,He stood in his shoesAnd he wonder’d.
Here we have a succession of staccato notes, but in the “Eve of St. Agnes” or “Ode to Autumn” almost every phrase is a chord, the individual notes of which each strike a separate sense.
WHEN Aristotle lays down that poets describe the thing that might be, but that the historian (like the natural historians above mentioned) merely describes that which has been, and that poetry is something of “more philosophic, graver import than history because its statements are of a universal nature” so far his idea of poetry tallies with our own. But when he explains his “might be” as meaning the “probable and necessary” accordingto our every-day experience of life, then we feel the difference between the Classical and Romantic conceptions of the art—Aristotle was trying to weed poetry of all the symbolic extravagances and impossibilities of the dream state in which it seems to have originated, and to confine it within rational and educative limits. Poetry was with him only an intuitive imitation of how typical men think and react upon each other when variously stimulated. It was what we might call the straight goods of thought conveyed in the traditional magic hampers; but there proved to be difficulties in the packing; the Classical ideal was, in practice, modified by the use of heroic diction and action, conventional indications to the audience that “imitation” was not realism, and that there must be no criticisms on that score; every one must “go under” to the hypnotic suggestion of the buskin and the archaic unnatural speech, and for once think ideally. For the same reason the Classical doctrine lays stress on the importance of the set verse-forms and the traditional construction of drama. For the benefit of my scientific readers, if my literary friends promise not to listen to what I am saying, I will attempt a definition of Classical and Romantic notions of Poetry:—
Classical is characteristic and Romantic is Metamorphic, that is, though they are both expressions of a mental conflict, in Classical poetry this conflict is expressed within the confines of waking probability and logic, in terms of the typical interaction of typicalminds; in Romantic poetry the conflict is expressed in the illogical but vivid method of dream-changings.
The dream origin of Romantic Poetry gives it the advantage of putting the audience in a state of mind ready to accept it; in a word, it has a naturally hypnotic effect. Characteristic poetry, which is social rather than personal, and proudly divorced from the hit-and-miss methods of the dream, yet feels the need of this easy suggestion to the audience for ideal thinking; and finds it necessary to avoid realism by borrowing shreds of accredited metamorphic diction and legend and building with them an illusion of real metamorphism. So the Hermit Crab, and once it has taken up a cast-off shell to cover its nakedness, it becomes a very terror among the whelks. The borrowed Metamorphism is hardened to a convention and a traditional form, and can be trusted almost inevitably to induce the receptive state in an average audience wherever used. Such a convention as I mean is the May-day dream of the Mediaeval rhymed moralities or the talking beasts of the fabulists.
Sometimes, however, owing to a sudden adventurous spirit appearing in the land, a nation’s Classical tradition is broken by popular ridicule and the reappearance of young Metamorphic Poets. But after a little paper-bloodshed and wranglings in the coffee-houses, the Classical tradition reappears, dressed up in the cast-off finery of the pioneer Metamorphics(who have by this time been succeeded by licentious and worthless pyrotechnists), and rules securely again. It is only fair to observe that the Romantic Revivalist often borrows largely from some Classical writer so obscured by Time and corrupt texts as to seem a comparative Romantic. This complicated dog-eat-dog process is cheerfully called “The Tradition of English Poetry.”
There is an interesting line of investigation which I have no space to pursue far, in a comparison between the Classicism of Wit and the Romanticism of Humour.
Wit depends on a study of the characteristic reactions of typical men to typically incongruous circumstances, and changed little from Theophrastus to Joe Miller. It depends for its effect very largely on the set form and careful diction, e. g:—
A certain inn-keeper of Euboea, with gout in his fingers, returned to his city after sacrificing an Ox to Delphic Apollo.... The celebrated wit, Sidney Smith, one day encountered Foote the comedian, in the Mall.... An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotchman agreed on a wager of one hundred guineas....
That is Classicism.
Romantic humour is marked by the extravagant improbability of dream-vision and by the same stereoscopic expression as in Romantic poetry.
Would Theophrastus have deigned to laugh at thefabliauof “The Great Panjandrum himself with thelittle round button at top?” I think not. Our leading living Classical poet was recently set a Romantic riddle as a test of his humour, “What did the tooth-paste say to the tooth brush?” Answer: “Squeeze me and I’ll meet you outside the Tube.” The bard was angry. “Who on earth squeezes his tube of tooth-paste with his tooth brush? Your riddle does not hold water.” He could understand the fable convention of inanimate objects talking, but this other was not “the probable and necessary.”
THE naming of colours in poetry may be used as a typical instance of the circumspection with which a poet is forced to move. The inexperienced one drenches his poems in gold, silver, purple, scarlet, with the idea of giving them, in fact, “colour.” The old hand almost never names a colour unless definitely presenting the well-known childish delight for bright colours, with the aid of some other indication of childhood, or unless definitely to imply a notable change from the normal nature of the coloured object, or at least some particular quality such as the ripeness of the cherry in Keats’ song just quoted. But even then he usually prefers to find a way round, for the appeal to the sense of colour alone is a most insecure way ofcreating an illusion; colours vary in mood by so very slight a change in shade or tone that pure colour named without qualification in a poem will seldom call up any precise image or mood.
To extemporize a couple of self-conscious blackboard examples:—
The first couplet has not nearly so much colour in it as the second, although in the first the mantle is definitely called green and the lady’s hands and neck, white, while in the second no colour is mentioned at all. The first robe is as it were coloured in a cheap painting-book; the green paint has only come off the cake in a thin yellowish solution and the painting-book instructions for colouring the hands and neck were “leave blank.” The second robe derives its far richer colour from the texture that the pasture simile suggests; the flesh parts get their whiteness from the suggestion of sun shining on water.
THE conscious part of composition is like the finishing of roughly shaped briars in a pipe factory. Where there are flaws in the wood, putty has to be used in order to make the pipe presentable. Only an expert eye can tell the putty when it has been coloured over, but there it is, time will reveal it and nobody is more aware of its presence now than the man who put it there. The public is often gulled into paying two guineas for a well-coloured straight-grain, when a tiny patch of putty under the bowl pulls down its sentimental value to ten shillings or so.
It is only fair to give an example of putty in a poem of my own; in writing songs, where the pattern is more fixed than in any other form, putty is almost inevitable. This song started sincerely and cheerfully enough:—
Once there came a mighty furious wind(So old worthies tell).It blew the oaks like ninepins down,And all the chimney stacks in townDown together fell.That was a wind—to write a record on,to hang a story on,to sing a ballad on,To ring the loud church bell!But for one huge storm that cracks the skyCame a thousand lesser winds rustling by,And the only wind that will make me singIs breeze of summer or gust of springBut no more hurtful thing.
Once there came a mighty furious wind(So old worthies tell).It blew the oaks like ninepins down,And all the chimney stacks in townDown together fell.That was a wind—to write a record on,to hang a story on,to sing a ballad on,To ring the loud church bell!But for one huge storm that cracks the skyCame a thousand lesser winds rustling by,And the only wind that will make me singIs breeze of summer or gust of springBut no more hurtful thing.
Once there came a mighty furious wind(So old worthies tell).It blew the oaks like ninepins down,And all the chimney stacks in townDown together fell.That was a wind—to write a record on,to hang a story on,to sing a ballad on,To ring the loud church bell!But for one huge storm that cracks the skyCame a thousand lesser winds rustling by,And the only wind that will make me singIs breeze of summer or gust of springBut no more hurtful thing.
This was leading up to a final verse:—
Once my sweetheart spoke an unkind wordAs I myself must tell,For none but I have seen or heardMy sweetheart to such cruelty stirredFor one who loved her well.That was a word—to write no record on,to hang no story on,to sing no ballad on,To ring no loud church bell!Yet for one fierce word that has made me smartTen thousand gentle ones ease my heart,So all the song that springs in meIs “Never a sweetheart born could beSo kind as only she.”
Once my sweetheart spoke an unkind wordAs I myself must tell,For none but I have seen or heardMy sweetheart to such cruelty stirredFor one who loved her well.That was a word—to write no record on,to hang no story on,to sing no ballad on,To ring no loud church bell!Yet for one fierce word that has made me smartTen thousand gentle ones ease my heart,So all the song that springs in meIs “Never a sweetheart born could beSo kind as only she.”
Once my sweetheart spoke an unkind wordAs I myself must tell,For none but I have seen or heardMy sweetheart to such cruelty stirredFor one who loved her well.That was a word—to write no record on,to hang no story on,to sing no ballad on,To ring no loud church bell!Yet for one fierce word that has made me smartTen thousand gentle ones ease my heart,So all the song that springs in meIs “Never a sweetheart born could beSo kind as only she.”
Half-way through this verse I was interrupted, and had to finish the poem consciously as best I could. On picking it up again, apparently I needed another middle verse of exactly the same sort of pattern as the first, to prepare the reader for the third. Searching among natural phenomena, I had already hit on drought as being a sufficiently destructive plague to be long remembered by old worthies. This would make the second verse.
So without more ado I started:—
Once there came a mighty thirsty drought(So old worthies tell).The quags were drained, the brooks were dried,Cattle and sheep and pigs all died,The parson preached on Hell.That was a drought—to write a record on etc.
Once there came a mighty thirsty drought(So old worthies tell).The quags were drained, the brooks were dried,Cattle and sheep and pigs all died,The parson preached on Hell.That was a drought—to write a record on etc.
Once there came a mighty thirsty drought(So old worthies tell).The quags were drained, the brooks were dried,Cattle and sheep and pigs all died,The parson preached on Hell.That was a drought—to write a record on etc.
So far I had concealed the poverty of my inspiration well enough, I flattered myself, but here we were stuck, my self-conscious muse and I. What was a pleasing diminutive ofdrought?—Pleasant sunshine? Not quite; the thirstiness of nature doesn’t show in pleasant sunshine at all. So, knowing all the time that I was doing wrong, I took my putty knife and slapped the stuff on thick, then trimmed and smoothed over carefully:—
But for one long drought of world-wide noteCome a thousand lesser ones on man’s throat,And the only drought for my singing moodIs a thirst for the very best ale that’s brewed,Soon quenched, but soon renewed.
But for one long drought of world-wide noteCome a thousand lesser ones on man’s throat,And the only drought for my singing moodIs a thirst for the very best ale that’s brewed,Soon quenched, but soon renewed.
But for one long drought of world-wide noteCome a thousand lesser ones on man’s throat,And the only drought for my singing moodIs a thirst for the very best ale that’s brewed,Soon quenched, but soon renewed.
In manuscript, the putty didn’t show, somehow, but I am ashamed to say I published the song. And in print, it seemed to show disgracefully. “It was the best butter,” said theMarch Hare. “It was the best putty,” I echoed, to excuse myself. But there is too much of it; the last half of the last verse even, is not all sound wood. This poem has been on my conscience for some time.
If spontaneous poetry is like the Genie from Aladdin’s Lamp, this conscious part of the art is like the assemblage of sheet, turnip-head, lighted candle and rake to make the village ghost.
As I were a trapesin’To Fox and Grapes InnTo get I a bottle of ginger wineI saw summatIn they old tummutAnd Lordie how his eyes did shine!Suffolk rhyme.(Cetera desunt)
As I were a trapesin’To Fox and Grapes InnTo get I a bottle of ginger wineI saw summatIn they old tummutAnd Lordie how his eyes did shine!Suffolk rhyme.(Cetera desunt)
As I were a trapesin’To Fox and Grapes InnTo get I a bottle of ginger wineI saw summatIn they old tummutAnd Lordie how his eyes did shine!Suffolk rhyme.(Cetera desunt)
The Genie is the most powerful magic of the two, and surest of its effect, but the Turnip Ghost is usually enough to startle rustics who wander at night, into prayer, sobriety, rapid movement or some other unusual state.
THOUGH it is a sound principle that the poet should write as if his work were first of all intended to be repeated from mouth to mouth, recitation or reading aloud actually distracts attention from the subtler properties of a poem, which though addressed nominally to the ear, the eye has to see in black and white before they can be appreciated. A beautiful voice can make magic of utter nonsense;I have been taken in by this sort of thing too often. The eye is the most sophisticated organ of sense and is therefore the one to which the poet must make a final appeal in critical matters, but as limited an appeal as possible when he is engaged in the art of illusion. The universal use of printing has put too much work on the eye: which has learned to skip and cut in self-defence. Ask any one who has readCRIME AND PUNISHMENTthe name of the hero. It is probable that he will remember the initial letter, possible that he will be able to repeat the whole name more or less recognizably, unlikely that he will be able to spell it correctly, almost certain that he will not have troubled to find out the correct pronunciation in Russian.
ASCIENTIFIC treatisecould, I suppose, be written on how to manipulate vowels and consonants so as to hurry or slow down rhythm, and suggest every different emotion by mere sound sequence but this is for every poet to find out for himself and practise automatically as a painter mixes his paints.
There was once an old Italian portrait painter, who coming to the end of his life, gathered his friendsand pupils together and revealed to them a great discovery he had made, as follows:—
“The art of portrait painting consists in putting the High Lights in exactly the right place in the eyes.”
When I come to my death-bed I have a similarly important message to deliver:—
“The art of poetry consists in knowing exactly how to manipulate the letter S.”
IN true poetry the mental bracing and relaxing on receipt of sensuous impressions, which we may call the rhythm of emotions, conditions the musical rhythm. This rhythm of emotions also determines the sound-texture of vowels and consonants, so that Metre, as schoolboys understand it when they are made to scan:—Friĕnds, Rōm|ans, count|rymēn, lĕnd mē|your eārs!, has in spontaneous poetry only a submerged existence. For the moment I will content myself by saying that if all words in daily speech were spoken at the same rate, if all stressed syllables and all unstressed syllables, similarly, were dwelt on for exactly the same length of time, as many prosodists assume, poetry would be a much easier art to practise; but it is the haste with which we treat some parts of speech, the deliberation we give to others, andthe wide difference in the weight of syllables composed of thin or broad vowels and liquid or rasping consonants, that make it impossible for the Anglo-French theory of only two standardized sound values, long or short, to be reasonably maintained. A far more subtle notation must be adopted, and if it must be shown on a black-board, poetry will appear marked out not in “feet” but in convenient musical bars, with the syllables resolved into quaver, dotted crotchet, semibreve and all the rest of them. Metre in the classical sense of an orderly succession of iambuses, trochees or whatnot, is forced to accept the part of policeman in the Harlequinade, a mere sparring partner for Rhythm the Clown who with his string of sausages is continually tripping him up and beating him over the head, and Texture the Harlequin who steals his truncheon and helmet. This preparatory explanation is necessary because if I were to proclaim in public that “the poet must write musically” it would be understood as an injunction to write like Thomas Moore, or his disciples of today.
AT this stage the question of the use of poetry to its readers may be considered briefly and without rhapsody. Poetry as the Greeks knew when they adopted the Drama as a cleansingrite of religion, is a form of psycho-therapy. Being the transformation into dream symbolism of some disturbing emotional crisis in the poet’s mind (whether dominated by delight or pain) poetry has the power of homoeopathically healing other men’s minds similarly troubled, by presenting them under the spell of hypnosis with an allegorical solution of the trouble. Once the allegory is recognized by the reader’s unconscious mind as applicable the affective power of his own emotional crisis is diminished. Apparently on a recognition of this aspect of poetry the Greeks founded their splendid emblem of its power—the polished shield of Perseus that mirrored the Gorgon’s head with no hurtful effect and allowed the hero to behead her at his ease. A well chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure if we are to believe Mr. Housman’s argument in “Terence, this is stupid stuff” no. LXII of hisShropshire Lad.
The musical side of poetry is, properly understood, not merely a hypnotic inducement to the reader to accept suggestions, but a form of psycho-therapy in itself, which, working in conjunction with the pictorial allegory, immensely strengthens its chance of success.
THE History of English Poetry is a subject I hope I shall never have to undertake, especially as I have grave doubts if there really is such a thing. Poets appear spasmodically, write their best poetry at uncertain intervals and owe nothing worth mentioning to any school or convention. Most histories of English Poetry are full of talk about “schools” or they concentrate on what they are pleased to call “the political tendencies” of poetry, and painfully trace the introduction and development in English of various set forms like the Sonnet, Blank Verse, and the Spenserian Stanza. This talk about politics I read as an excuse of the symmetrical-minded for spreading out the Eighteenth Century poets famous in their day to a greater length than the quality of their work can justify. As for the history of metric forms it is, in a sense, of little more vital importance to poetry than the study of numismatics would appear to an expert in finance.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
An undergraduate studying English Literature at one of our oldest universities was recently confronted by a senior tutor, Professor X, with a review of his terminal studies and the charge of temperamentalism.
“I understand from Prof. Y,” he explained, “that your literary judgments are a trifle summary, that in fact you prefer some poets to others.”
He acknowledged the charge with all humility.
“I am sorry, nephew, that I cannot understand your Modern Poetry. Indeed I strongly dislike it; it seems to me mostly mere impudence.”
“But, uncle, you are not expected to like it! The old house-dog goes at dinner time to the broken biscuits in his bowl markeddogand eats heartily. Tomorrow give him an unaccustomed dainty in an unaccustomed bowl and he will sniff and turn away in disgust. Though tempted to kick him for his unrecognizing stupidity, his ingratitude, his ridiculous preference for the formal biscuit, yet refrain!
“The sight and smell associations of thedog bowlout of which he has eaten so long have actually, scientists say, become necessary for bringing the proper digestive juices into his mouth. What you offer him awakes no hunger, his mouth does not water; he is puzzled and insulted.
“But give it to the puppies instead; they’ll gobbleit up and sniff contemptuously afterwards at the old dog and his bowl of biscuit.”
IN England, since—shall we name the convenient date 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition?—the educated reading public has developed analytic powers which have not been generally matched by a corresponding development of the co-ordinating arts of the poet. Old charms will no longer hold, old baits will no longer be taken; the reader has become too wary. The triumph of the analytic spirit is nowhere better shown than in these histories of Poetry just mentioned, where the interest in fake poetry is just as strong or even stronger than the interest in poetry itself.
As Religions inevitably die with their founders, the disciples having either to reject or formularize their master’s opinions, so with Poetry, it dies on the formation of a poetic school. The analytic spirit has been, I believe, responsible both for the present coma of religion among our educated classes and for the disrespect into which poetry and the fine arts have fallen. As for these histories of poetry, the very fact that people are interested in failures of the various “Schools” to universalize the individual system of a master, is a great discouragement to apoet trying by every means in his power to lay the spirit of sophistication.
But the age of poetry is not yet over if poets will only remember what the word means and not confuse it with acrostic-making and similar ingenious Alexandrianisms. Earlier civilizations than ours have forgotten the necessarily spontaneous nature of the art, and have tried (for lack of any compelling utterance) to beat the sophisticated critics of their day by piling an immense number of technical devices on their verses, killing what little passion there was, by the tyranny of self-imposed rules. The antithetical couplet of Pope or the Ovidian hexameter-and-pentameter are bad enough, but the ancient Irish and Welsh bards were even more restricted by their chain-rhymes and systems of consonantal sequence, the final monstrosity being the Welshenglynof four lines, governed by ninety-odd separate rules. The way out for Poetry does not lie by this road, we may be sure. But neither on the other hand do we yet need to call in the Da-da-ists.
RHYMES properly used are the good servants whose presence gives the dinner table a sense of opulent security; they are never awkward, they hand the dishes silently and professionally.You can trust them not to interrupt the conversation of the table or allow their personal disagreements to come to the notice of the guests; but some of them are getting very old for their work.
The principle governing the use of alliteration and rhyme appear to be much the same. In unsophisticated days an audience could be moved by the profuse straight-ahead alliteration ofPiers Plowman, but this is too obvious a device for our times. The best effects seem to have been attained in more recent poetry by precisely (if unconsciously) gauging the memory length of a reader’s mental ear and planting the second alliterative word at a point where the memory of the first is just beginning to blurr; but has not quite faded. By cross-alliteration on these lines a rich atmosphere has resulted and the reader’s eye has been cheated. So with internal and ordinary rhyme; but the memory length for the internal rhyme appears somewhat longer than memory for alliteration, and for ordinary rhyme, longer still.
ARISTOTLE defended poetical “properties” that would correspond nowadays with “thine” and “whensoe’er” and “flowerets gay,” by saying “it is a great thing indeed to makeproper use of these poetic forms as also of compounds and strange words. The mere fact of their not being in ordinary speech, gives the diction a non-prosaic character.” One Ariphrades had been ridiculing the Tragedians on this score; and Aristotle saw, I suppose, that a strange diction has for the simple-minded reader a power of surprise which enables the poet to work on his feelings unhindered, but he did not see that as soon as a single Ariphrades had ridiculed what was becoming a conventional surprise, a Jack-in-the-Box that every one expected, then was the time for the convention to be scrapped; ridicule is awkwardly catching.
The same argument applies to the use of rhyme to-day; while rhyme can still be used as one of the ingredients of the illusion, a compelling force to make the reader go on till he hears an echo to the syllable at the end of the last pause, it still remains a valuable technical asset. But as soon as rhyme is worn threadbare the ear anticipates the echo and is contemptuous of the clumsy trick.
The reader must be made to surrender himself completely to the poet, as to his guide in a strange country; he must never be allowed to run ahead and say “Hurry up, sir, I know this part of the country as well as you. After that ‘snow-capped mountain’ we inevitably come to a ‘leaping fountain.’ I see it ‘dancing’ and ‘glancing’ in the distance. And by the token of these ‘varied flowers’ on the grass, I know that another few feet will bring us to the ‘leafybowers’ which, if I am not mistaken, will protect us nicely from the ‘April showers’ for a few ‘blissful hours.’ Come on, sir! am I guiding you, or are you guiding me?”
However, the time has not yet come to get rid of rhyme altogether: it has still plenty of possibilities, asDumb Cramboat a Christmas party will soon convince the sceptical; and assonances separated even by the whole length of the mouth can work happily together, with or without the co-operation of ordinary rhyme.
These are all merely illustrations of the general principle that as soon as a poem emerges from the hidden thought processes that give it birth, and the poet reviews it with the conscious part of his mind, then his task is one not of rules or precedents so much as of ordinary common-sense.
THERE is a great dignity in poetry unaffectedly written in stern stiff traditional forms and we feel in spite of ourselves that we owe it the reverence due to ruined abbeys, prints of Fujiyama, or Chelsea pensioners with red coats, medals, and long white beards. But that is noreason for following tradition blindly; it should be possible for a master of words to improvise a new convention, whenever he wishes, that will give his readers just the same notion of centuried authority and smoothness without any feeling of contempt.
AYOUNG poet of whose friendship I am very proud was speaking about poetry to one of those University literary clubs which regard English poetry as having found its culmination in the last decade of the nineteenth century and as having no further destiny left for it. He said that he was about to tell them the most important thing he knew about poetry, so having roused themselves from a customary languor, the young fellows were disappointed to hear, not a brilliant critical paradox or a sparkling definition identifying poetry with decay, but a mere rule of thumb for the working poet:
When in DoubtCut it Out.
When in DoubtCut it Out.
When in DoubtCut it Out.
ORDINARY readers may deplore the habit of raking up the trivial and bad verse of good poets now long dead, but for living poets there is nothing more instructive in the world than these lapses, and in the absence of honest biography they alone are evidence for what would be naturally assumed, that these great poets in defiance of principle often tried to write in their dull moments just because they longed for the exquisite excitement of composition, and thought that the act of taking up a pen might induce the hypnotic state of which I have spoken. But afterwards they forgot to destroy what they produced, or kept it in the hope that it was some good after all.
MODERN treatises on Poetry usually begin with definitions; ancient treatises with a heavy weight of classical authority and a number of grave reflections on the nature of the Poet, proving conclusively that he should be a manof vast experience of life, apt judgment, versatile talent, and above all unimpeachable moral character. Authority seems to count for nothing in these days, compared with the value set on it by Sir Philip Sidney in his “Apologie for Poetrie,” and the modern treatise would never ask its reader more than to admit a negative conclusion on the moral question, that poets who think they can combine indiscriminate debauch with dyspeptic Bohemian squalor and yet turn out good work merely by applying themselves conscientiously and soberly in working hours, are likely to be disappointed; however, my personal feeling is that poets who modify the general ethical principles first taught them at home and at school, can only afford to purchase the right to do so at a great price of mental suffering and difficult thinking. Wanton, lighthearted apostasies from tradition are always either a sign or a prophecy of ineffectual creative work.
Art is not moral, but civilized man has invented the word to denote a standard of conduct which the mass demands of the individual and so poetry which makes a definitely anti-moral appeal is likely to antagonize two readers out of three straight away, and there is little hope of playing the confidence trick on an enemy. Being therefore addressed to a limited section even of the smallish class who read poetry, such poetry will tend like most high-brow art to have more dexterity than robustness.
For a complete identification of successful art withmorality I always remember with appreciation what an Irishman, a complete stranger, once said to my father on hearing that he was author of the song “Father O’Flynn”—“Ye behaved well, sir, when ye wrote that one.”
THE ethical problem is further complicated for poets by the tussle in their nature between the spontaneous and the critical biases. The principle of loyalty on which the present non-religious system of English manners depends is strained in them to breaking point by the tendency to sudden excitement, delight or disgust with ideas for which mature consideration entirely alters the values, or with people who change by the same process from mere acquaintances to intimate friends and back in a flash. Which should explain many apparently discreditable passages in, for instance, the life and letters of Keats or Wordsworth, and should justify Walt Whitman’s outspoken “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
The poet is the outsider who sees most of the game, and, by the same token, all or nearly all the great English poets have been men either of ungenteelbirth or of good family which has been scandalized by their subsequent adoption of unusual social habits during the best years of their writing. To the polite society of their day—outsiders to a man.
Dear Sir,—Many thanks for the volume of your poems you have sent me. Though I had never seen any of your compositions before, they are already old friends—that is, I like them but I see through them.Yours cordially, Etc.
Dear Sir,—
Many thanks for the volume of your poems you have sent me. Though I had never seen any of your compositions before, they are already old friends—that is, I like them but I see through them.
Yours cordially, Etc.
AS in household economics, you cannot take out of a stocking more than has been put in, so in poetry you cannot present suffering or romance beyond your own experience. The attempt to do this is one of the chief symptoms of the fake poet; ignorance forces him to draw on the experience of a real poet who actually has been through the emotional crises which he himself wants to restate.The fake is often made worse by the theft of small turns of speech which though not in any sense irregular or grotesque, the poet has somehow made his own; it is like stealing marked coins, and is a dangerous practice when Posterity is policeman. Most poets visit Tom Tiddler’s ground now and then, but the wise ones melt down the stolen coin and impress it with their own “character.”
There is a great deal of difference between fake poetry and ordinary bad poetry. The bad poet is likely to have suffered and felt joy as deeply as the poet reckoned first class, but he has not somehow been given the power of translating experience into images and emblems, or of melting words in the furnace of his mind and making them flow into the channels prepared to take them. Charles Sorley said, addressing the good poets on behalf of the bad poets (though he was really on the other side):—
We are the homeless even as you,Who hope but never can begin.Our hearts are wounded through and throughLike yours, but our hearts bleed within;We too make music but our tonesScape not the barrier of our bones.
We are the homeless even as you,Who hope but never can begin.Our hearts are wounded through and throughLike yours, but our hearts bleed within;We too make music but our tonesScape not the barrier of our bones.
We are the homeless even as you,Who hope but never can begin.Our hearts are wounded through and throughLike yours, but our hearts bleed within;We too make music but our tonesScape not the barrier of our bones.
Mere verse, as an earlier section has attempted to show, is neither bad poetry nor fake poetry necessarily. It finds its own categories, good verse, bad verse and imitation. In its relation to poetry itstands as chimpanzee to man: only the theory that a conflict of emotional ideas is a necessary ingredient of verse to make it poetry, will satisfactorily explain why many kinds of verse, loosely called Poetry, such as Satire and Didactic verse are yet popularly felt not to be the “highest” forms of Poetry. I would say that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred these bear no real relation to Poetry, even though dressed up in poetical language, and that in the hundredth case they are poetry in spite of themselves. Where the writer is dominated by only one aim, in satire, the correction of morals; in didactic verse, instruction; there is no conflict and therefore no poetry. But in rare cases where some Juvenal slips through feelings of compunction to a momentary mood of self-satire and even forgets himself so much as to compliment his adversary; or in didactic verse where a sudden doubt arises and the teacher admits himself a blind groper after truth (so Lucretius time and time again) and breaks his main argument in digressions after loveliness and terror, only then does Poetry appear. It flashes out with the surprise and shock of a broken electric circuit.
Even thememoria technicacan slide from verse into poetry. The rhyme to remember the signs of the Zodiac by, ends wonderfully:—
The Ram the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,And next the Crab, the Lion shines,The Virgin and the Scales,The Scorpion, Archer and He Goat,The Man who carries the Watering Pot,The Fish with glittering tails.
The Ram the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,And next the Crab, the Lion shines,The Virgin and the Scales,The Scorpion, Archer and He Goat,The Man who carries the Watering Pot,The Fish with glittering tails.
The Ram the Bull, the Heavenly Twins,And next the Crab, the Lion shines,The Virgin and the Scales,The Scorpion, Archer and He Goat,The Man who carries the Watering Pot,The Fish with glittering tails.
The language of science makes a hieroglyphic, or says “The sign of Aquarius”; the language of prose says “A group of stars likened by popular imagery to a Water Carrier”; the language of Poetry converts the Eastern water carrier with his goatskin bag or pitcher, into an English gardener, then puts him to fill his watering pot from heavenly waters where the Fish are darting. The author of this rhyme has visualized his terrestrial emblems most clearly; he has smelt the rankness of the Goat, and yet in the “Lion shines” and the “glittering tails” one can see that he has been thinking in terms of stars also. The emotional contradiction lies in the stars’ remote aloofness from complications of this climatic and smelly world, from the terror of Lion, Archer, Scorpion, from the implied love-interest of Heavenly Twins and Virgin, and from the daily cares of the Scales, Ram, Bull, Goat, Fish, Crab and Watering Pot.
The ready way to distinguish verse from poetry is this, Verse makes a flat pattern on the paper, Poetry stands out in relief.
QWhen is a fake not a fake?
THERE is a blind spot or many blind spots in the critical eye of every writer; he cannot find for himself certain surface faults which anybody else picks out at once. Especially there is a bias towards running to death a set of words which when he found them, were quite honest and inoffensive. Shelley had a queer obsession about “caves,” “abysses,” and “chasms” which evidently meant for him much more than he can make us see. A poet will always be wise to submit his work, when he can do no more to straighten it, to the judgment of friends whose eyes have their blind spots differently placed; only, he must be careful, I suppose, not to be forced into making any alterations while in their presence.
A poet reveals to a friend in a fit of excitement “I say, listen, I am going to write a great poem on such-and-such! I have the whole thing clear in my mind, waiting to be put down.” But if he goes on to give a detailed account of the scheme, then the actof expression (especially prose expression) kills the creative impulse by presenting it prematurely with too much definiteness. The poem is never written. It remains for a few hopeless days as a title, a couple of phrases and an elaborate scheme of work, and is then banished to the lumber room of the mind; later it probably becomes subsidiary to another apparently irrelevant idea and appears after a month or two in quite a different shape, the elaboration very much condensed, the phrase altered and the title lost.
Now this section is as suitable as any other for the prophecy that the study of Poetry will very soon pass from the hands of Grammarians, Prosodists, historical research men, and such-like, into those of the psychologists. And what a mess they’ll make of it; to be sure!
THE later drafts of some lines I wrote recently called CYNICS AND ROMANTICS, and contrasting the sophisticated and ingenuous ideas of Love, give a fairly good idea of the conscious process of getting a poem in order. I make no claim for achievement, the process is all that is intended to appear, and three or four lines are enough for illustration:
1st Draft.
In club or messroom let them sit,Let them indulge salacious witOn love’s romance, but not with heartsAccustomed to those healthier partsOf grim self-mockery....
In club or messroom let them sit,Let them indulge salacious witOn love’s romance, but not with heartsAccustomed to those healthier partsOf grim self-mockery....
In club or messroom let them sit,Let them indulge salacious witOn love’s romance, but not with heartsAccustomed to those healthier partsOf grim self-mockery....
2nd Draft.(Consideration:—It is too soon in the poem for the angry jerkiness of “Let them indulge.” Also “Indulge salacious” is hard to say; at present, this is a case for being as smooth as possible.)
In club or messroom let them sitIndulging contraversial witOn love’s romance, but not with heartsAccustomed....
In club or messroom let them sitIndulging contraversial witOn love’s romance, but not with heartsAccustomed....
In club or messroom let them sitIndulging contraversial witOn love’s romance, but not with heartsAccustomed....
3rd Draft.(Consideration:—No, we have the first two lines beginning with “In.” It worries the eye. And “sit, indulging” puts two short “i’s” close together. “Contraversial” is not the word. It sounds as if they were angry, but they are too blasé for that. And “love’s romance” is cheap for the poet’s own ideal.)