CHAPTER XXIXPermanence as a CriterionWherewith being crown’d,Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight.Shakespeare,Sonnet LX.Thepermanence of poetry is a subject closely connected with the foregoing. Just as there is a prejudice in favour of work with a wide popular appeal, so there is another in favour of work which lasts, which has “stood the verdict of the centuries”, or is thought likely to stand it. Both are in part due to critical timidity; if we cannot decide ourselves, let us at least count hands and go with the majority.But circumstances which have nothing to do with value sometimes determine survival, and work which is of great value must often perish for that very reason. It never gets printed, none will look at it or listen to it. And immortality often attaches itself to the bad as firmly as to the good. Few things are worse thanHiawathaorThe Black Cat,Lorna DooneorLe Crime de Silvestre Bonnard, and some of the greatest favourites*of the anthologies figure there through their ‘bad eminence’.There are, however, reasons for connecting persistence of appeal with a certain type of structure, and, which is more interesting, instant fame with a failure to appeal to subsequent generations. Work which relies upon ready-made attitudes, without being able to reconstitute similar attitudes when they are not already existent, will often make an appeal to one generation which is a mystery to the generations with different attitudes which follow. But this disadvantage from the point of view of permanence of communication does not necessarily involve any lack of value for those to whom the experiences are accessible. Very often, of course, it will accompany low value; but this need not be so.The permanence of some art has often been an excuse for fantastic hypotheses. Such art has been thought to embody immortal essences, to reveal special kinds of ‘eternal’ truths. But such debilitating speculations here no less than elsewhere should be avoided. Those are not the terms in which the matter may best be discussed. The uniformity of the impulses from which the work of art starts is a sufficient explanation of its permanence. Where the impulses involved are only accidentally touched off through being temporarily in a heightened state of excitability, we may reasonably expect that there will be little permanence. As a catchword will work one year like magic, since certain attitudes are for social reasons ready poised on a hair-trigger adjustment, and the next year be inoperative and incomprehensible, so, on a larger scale and in less striking degree, men’s special social circumstances often provide opportunities for works of art which at other times are quite inadequate stimuli. There are fashions in the most important things as in the least, but for the artist to profit by them is usually to forgo permanence. The greater the ease of communication under such conditions the greater the danger of obsolescence.Far more of the great art of the past is actually obsolete than certain critics pretend, who forget what a special apparatus of erudition they themselves bring to their criticism. TheDivina Commediais a representative example. It is true that for adequately equipped readers who can imaginatively reproduce the world outlook of Aquinas, and certain attitudes to woman and to chastity, which are even more inaccessible, there is no obsolescence. But this is true of the most forgotten poems. Actual obsolescence is not in general a sign of low value, but merely of the use of special circumstances for communication. That a work reflects, summarises and is penetrated by its age and period is not a ground for assigning it a low value, and yet this saturation more than anything else limits the duration of its appeal. Only so far as a work avoids the catchword type in its method, and relies upon elements likely to remain stable, formal elements for example, can it escape the touch of time. That Dante is neglected is due only indirectly to his present-day obscurity; he is still as accessible as ever through his formal side. It is the labour required from readers who are not content with a partial approach which explains why he is so little read even by the scholarly. What can be translated in: him, the content, is precisely what is of least present and future interest, and at the same time most difficult to understand.
Wherewith being crown’d,Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight.Shakespeare,Sonnet LX.
Wherewith being crown’d,Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight.
Shakespeare,Sonnet LX.
Thepermanence of poetry is a subject closely connected with the foregoing. Just as there is a prejudice in favour of work with a wide popular appeal, so there is another in favour of work which lasts, which has “stood the verdict of the centuries”, or is thought likely to stand it. Both are in part due to critical timidity; if we cannot decide ourselves, let us at least count hands and go with the majority.
But circumstances which have nothing to do with value sometimes determine survival, and work which is of great value must often perish for that very reason. It never gets printed, none will look at it or listen to it. And immortality often attaches itself to the bad as firmly as to the good. Few things are worse thanHiawathaorThe Black Cat,Lorna DooneorLe Crime de Silvestre Bonnard, and some of the greatest favourites*of the anthologies figure there through their ‘bad eminence’.
There are, however, reasons for connecting persistence of appeal with a certain type of structure, and, which is more interesting, instant fame with a failure to appeal to subsequent generations. Work which relies upon ready-made attitudes, without being able to reconstitute similar attitudes when they are not already existent, will often make an appeal to one generation which is a mystery to the generations with different attitudes which follow. But this disadvantage from the point of view of permanence of communication does not necessarily involve any lack of value for those to whom the experiences are accessible. Very often, of course, it will accompany low value; but this need not be so.
The permanence of some art has often been an excuse for fantastic hypotheses. Such art has been thought to embody immortal essences, to reveal special kinds of ‘eternal’ truths. But such debilitating speculations here no less than elsewhere should be avoided. Those are not the terms in which the matter may best be discussed. The uniformity of the impulses from which the work of art starts is a sufficient explanation of its permanence. Where the impulses involved are only accidentally touched off through being temporarily in a heightened state of excitability, we may reasonably expect that there will be little permanence. As a catchword will work one year like magic, since certain attitudes are for social reasons ready poised on a hair-trigger adjustment, and the next year be inoperative and incomprehensible, so, on a larger scale and in less striking degree, men’s special social circumstances often provide opportunities for works of art which at other times are quite inadequate stimuli. There are fashions in the most important things as in the least, but for the artist to profit by them is usually to forgo permanence. The greater the ease of communication under such conditions the greater the danger of obsolescence.
Far more of the great art of the past is actually obsolete than certain critics pretend, who forget what a special apparatus of erudition they themselves bring to their criticism. TheDivina Commediais a representative example. It is true that for adequately equipped readers who can imaginatively reproduce the world outlook of Aquinas, and certain attitudes to woman and to chastity, which are even more inaccessible, there is no obsolescence. But this is true of the most forgotten poems. Actual obsolescence is not in general a sign of low value, but merely of the use of special circumstances for communication. That a work reflects, summarises and is penetrated by its age and period is not a ground for assigning it a low value, and yet this saturation more than anything else limits the duration of its appeal. Only so far as a work avoids the catchword type in its method, and relies upon elements likely to remain stable, formal elements for example, can it escape the touch of time. That Dante is neglected is due only indirectly to his present-day obscurity; he is still as accessible as ever through his formal side. It is the labour required from readers who are not content with a partial approach which explains why he is so little read even by the scholarly. What can be translated in: him, the content, is precisely what is of least present and future interest, and at the same time most difficult to understand.