The Poet's Poet Part 33

Does this prove that only the supreme poet speaks truly, and that we must hush all voices but his if we would learn what is the essential element in the poetic character? Then we are indeed in a hard case.

There is no unanimity of opinion among us regarding the supreme English poet of the last century, and if we dared follow personal taste in declaring one of higher alt.i.tude than all the others only a small percentage of readers would be satisfied when we set up the _Prelude_ or _Adonais_ or _Childe Harold_ or _Sordello_ beside the _Republic_ as containing the one portrait of the ideal singer worthy to stand beside the portrait of the ideal philosopher. And this is not the worst of the difficulty. Even if we turn from Sh.e.l.ley to Byron, from Wordsworth to Browning, in quest of the one satisfactory conception of the poet, we shall not hear in anyone of their poems the single clear ringing note for which we are listening. When anyone of these men is considering the poetic character, his thought behaves like a pendulum, swinging back and forth between two poles.

Thus we ourselves have admitted the futility of our quest of truth, the critic may conclude. But no, before we admit as much, let us see exactly what const.i.tutes the lack of unity which troubles us. After its persistence in verse of the same country, the same period, the same tradition, the same poet, even, has led us to the brink of despair, its further persistence rouses in us fresh hope, or at least intense curiosity, for what impresses us as the swinging of a pendulum keeps up its rhythmical beat, not merely in the mind of each poet, but in each phase of his thought. We find the same measured ant.i.thesis of thought, whether he is considering the singer's environment or his health, his inspiration or his mission.

In treatment even of the most superficial matters related to the poet's character, this vibration forces itself upon our attention. Poets are sofar from subscribing to Taine's belief in the supreme importance of environment as molder of genius that the question of the singer's proper habitat is of comparative indifference to them, yet the dualism that we have noted runs as true to form here as in more fundamental issues. When one takes the suffrage of poets in general on the question of environment, two voices are equally strong. Genius is fostered by solitude, we hear; but again, genius is fostered by human companionship.

At first we may a.s.sume that this divergence of view characterizes separate periods. Writers in the romantic period, we say, praised the poet whose thought was turned inward by solitude; while writers in the Victorian period praised the poet whose thought was turned upon the spectacle of human pa.s.sions. But on finding that this cla.s.sification is true only in the most general way, we go farther. Within the Victorian period Browning, we say, is the advocate of the social poet, as Arnold is the advocate of the solitary one. But still our cla.s.sification is inadequate. Is Browning the expositor of the gregarious poet? It is true that he feels it necessary for the singer to "look upon men and their cares and hopes and fears and joys." [Footnote: _Pauline_.] But he makes Sordello flee like a hunted creature back to Goito and solitude in quest of renewed inspiration. Is Arnold the expositor of the solitary poet? True, he urges him to fly from "the strange disease of modern life". [Footnote: _The Scholar Gypsy_.] Yet he preaches that the duty of the poet is

to scan Not his own course, but that of man.

[Footnote: _Resignation_.]

Within the romantic period the same phenomenon is evident. Does Wordsworth paint the ideal poet dwelling apart from human distractions?

Yet he declares that his deepest insight is gained by listening to "the still sad music of humanity". In Keats, Sh.e.l.ley, Byron, the same ant.i.thesis of thought is not less evident.

We cannot justly conclude that a compromise between contradictions, an avoidance of extremes, is what anyone of these poets stands for. It is complete absorption in the drame of human life that makes one a poet, they aver; but again, it is complete isolation that allows the inmost poetry of one's nature to rise to consciousness. At the same time they make it clear that the supreme poet needs the gifts of both environments. To quote Walt Whitman,

What the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impa.s.sive globe with all its shows of day and night) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of men, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; --Then the full-grown poet stood between the two and took each by the hand; And today and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release till he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them.

The paradox in poets' views was equally perplexing, no matter what phase of the poetic character was considered. A mere resume of the topics discussed in these essays is enough to make the two horns of the dilemma obtrude themselves. Did we consider the financial status of the poet? We heard that he should experience all the luxurious sensations that wealth can bring; on the other hand we heard that his poverty should shield him from distractions that might call him away from acc.u.mulation of spiritual treasure. Did we consider the poet's age? We heard that the freshness of sensation possessed only by youth carries the secret of poetry; on the other hand we heard that the secret lies in depth of spiritual insight possible only to old age. So in the allied question of the poet's body. He should have

The dress Of flesh that amply lets in loveliness At eye and ear,

that no beauty in the physical world may escape him. Yet he should be absorbed in the other world to such a degree that blindness, even, is a blessing to him, enabling him to "see, no longer blinded by his eyes."

The question of the poet's health arose. He should have the exuberance and aplomb of the young animal; no, he should have a body frail enough to enable him, like the mediaeval mystic, to escape from its importunatedemands upon the spirit.

In the more fundamental questions that poets considered, relating to the poet's temperament, his loves, his inspiration, his morality, his religion, his mission, the same cleavage invariably appeared. What const.i.tutes the poetic temperament? It is a fickle interchange of joy and grief, for the poet is lifted on the wave of each new sensation; it is an imperturbable serenity, for the poet dwells apart with the eternal verities. What is the distinguishing characteristic of his love? The object of his worship must be embodied, pa.s.sionate, yet his desire is for purely spiritual union with her. What is the nature of his inspiration? It fills him with trancelike impa.s.sivity to sensation; it comes upon him with such overwhelming sensation that he must touch the walls to see whether they or his visions are the reality. [Footnote: See Christopher Wordsworth, _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, Vol. II, p. 480.]

How is his moral life different from that of other men? He is more fiercely tempted, because he is more sensitive to human pa.s.sions; he is shut away from all temptations because his interest is solely in the principle of beauty. What is the nature of his religious instinct? He is mad with thirst for G.o.d; he will have no G.o.d but his own humanity. What is his mission? He must awaken men to the wonder of the physical world and fit them to abide therein; he must redeem them from physical bondage, and open their eyes to the spiritual world.

The impatient listener to this lengthy catalogue of the poet's views may a.s.sert that it has no significance. It merely shows that there are many kinds of poets, who attempt to imitate many aspects of human life. But surely our catalogue does not show just this. There is no multiform picture of the poet here. The pendulum of his desire vibrates undeviatingly between two points only. Sense and spirit, spirit and sense, the pulse of his nature seems to reiterate incessantly. There is no poet so absorbed in sensation that physical objects do not occasionally fade into unreality when he compares them with the spirit of life. Even Walt Whitman, most sensuous of all our poets, exclaims,

Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts, non-realities.

[Footnote: _Apparitions_.]

On the other hand there is no poet whose taste is so purely spiritual that he is indifferent to sensation. The idealism of Wordsworth, even, did not preclude his finding in sensation

An appet.i.te, a feeling and a love That had no need of a remoter charm By thought supplied.

Is this systole and diastole of the affection from sense to spirit, from spirit to sense, peculiarly characteristic of English poets? There may be some reason for a.s.suming that it is. Historians have repeatedly pointed out that there are two strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture the a.s.sertion that the dualism of the poet's desires is not an insular characteristic, but is typical of his race in every country.

Because the poet is drawn equally to this world and to the other world, shall we characterize him as a hybrid creature, and a.s.sert that an irreconcilable discord is in his soul? We shall prove ourselves singularly deaf to concord if we do so. Poets have been telling us over and over again that the distinctive element in the poetic nature is harmony. What is harmony? It is the reconciliation of opposites, says Eurymachus in the _Symposium_. It is union of the finite and the infinite, says Socrates in the _Philebus_. Do the poet's desires point in opposite directions? But so, it seems, do the poplars that stand tiptoe, breathless, at the edge of the dreaming pool. The whole secret of the aesthetic repose lies in the duality of the poet's desire.

His imagination enables him to see all life as two in one, or one in two; he leaves us uncertain which. His imagination reflects the spiritual in the sensual and the sensual in the spiritual till we cannot tell which is the more tangible or the more meaningful. We sought unity in the poetic character, but we can reduce a nature to complete and barren unity only by draining it of imagination, and it is imagination which enables the poet to find aesthetic unity in the two worlds of sense and spirit, where the rest of us can see only conflict. There is a little poem, by Walter Conrad Arensberg, which is to me a symbol of this power of reflection which distinguishes the poetic imagination. It is called _Voyage a L'Infine_:

The swan existing Is like a song with an accompaniment Imaginary.

Across the gra.s.sy lake, Across the lake to the shadow of the willows It is accompanied by an image, --as by Debussy's "Reflets dans l'eau."

The swan that is Reflects Upon the solitary water--breast to breast With the duplicity: "The other one!"

And breast to breast it is confused.

O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession!

It is accompanied by the image of itself Alone.

At night The lake is a wide silence, Without imagination.

But why should poets a.s.sume, someone may object, that this mystic answering of sense to spirit and of spirit to sense is to be discovered by the imagination of none but poets? All men are made up of flesh and spirit; do not the desires of all men, accordingly, point to the spiritual and to the physical, exactly as do the poet's? In a sense; yes; but on the other hand all men but the poet have an aim that is clearly either physical or spiritual; therefore they do not stand poised between the two worlds with the perfect balance of interests which marks the poet. The philosopher and the man of religion recognize their goal as a spiritual and ascetic one. If they concern themselves more than is needful with the temporal and sensual, they feel that they are false to their ideal. The scientist and the man of affairs, on the other hand, are concerned with the physical; therefore most of the time they dismiss consideration of the spiritual as being outside of their province. Of course many persons would disagree with this last statement. The genius of an Edison, they a.s.sert, is precisely like the genius of a poet. But if this were true, we should be moved by the mechanism of a phonograph just as we are moved by a poem, and we are not. We may be amazed by the invention, and still find our thoughts tied to the physical world. It is not the instrument, but the voice of an artist added to it that makes us conscious of the two worlds of sense and spirit, reflecting one another.

Supposing that all this is true, what is gained by discovering, from a consensus of poets' views, that the distinctive characteristic of the poet is harmony of sense and spirit? Is not this so obvious as to be a truism? It is perhaps so obvious that like all the truest things in the world it is likely to be ignored unless insisted upon occasionally.

Certainly it has been ignored too frequently in the history of English criticism. Whenever men of simpler aims than the poet have written criticism, they have misread the issue in various ways, and have usually ended by condemning the poet in so far as he diverged from their own goal.

It is obvious that the moral obsession which has twisted so much of English criticism is the result of a failure to grasp the real nature of the poet's vitality. Criticism arose, with Gosson's _School of Abuse_, as an attack upon the ethics of the poet by the puritan, who had cut himself off from the joys of sense. Because champions of poetry were concerned with answering this attack, the bulk of Elizabethan criticism, that of Lodge, [Footnote: _Defense of Poetry, Musick and Stage Plays._] Harrington, [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry._] Meres, [Footnote: _Palladis Tamia._] Campion, [Footnote: _Observations in the Art of English Poetry._] Daniel, [Footnote: _Defense of Rhyme._] and even in lesser degree of Sidney, obscures the aesthetic problem by turning it into an ethical one.

In the criticism of Sidney, himself a poet, one does find implied a recognition of the twofold significance of the poet's powers. He a.s.serts his spiritual pre-eminence strongly, declaring that the poet, unlike the scientist, is not bound to the physical world.[Footnote: "He is not bound to any such subjection, as scientists, to nature." _Defense of Poetry._] On the other hand he is clearly aware of the need for a sensuous element in poetry, since by it, Sidney declares, the poet may lead men by "delight" to follow the forms of virtue.

The next critic of note, Dryden, in his revulsion from the ascetic character which the puritans would develop in the poet, swung too far to the other extreme, and threw the poetic character out of balance by belittling its spiritual insight. He did justice to the physical element in poetry, defining poetic drama, the type of his immediate concern, as "a just and lively image of human nature, in its actions, pa.s.sions, and traverses of fortune," [Footnote: _English Garner,_ III, 513.] but he appears to have felt the ideal aspect of the poet's nature as merely a negation of the sensual, so that he was driven to the absurdity of recommending a purely mechanical device, rhyme, as a means of elevating poetry above the sordid plane of "a bare imitation." In the eighteenth century, Edmund Burke likewise laid too much stress upon the physical aspect of the poet's nature, in accounting for the sublime in poetry as originating in the sense of pain, and the beautiful as originating in pleasure. Yet he comes closer than most critics to laying his finger onthe particular point which distinguishes poets from philosophers, namely, their dependence upon sensation.

With the single exception of Burke, however, the critics of the eighteenth century labored under a misapprehension no less blind than the moral obsession which twisted Elizabethan criticism. In the eighteenth century critics were p.r.o.ne to confuse the spiritual element in the poet's nature with intellectualism, and the sensuous element with emotionalism. Such criticism tended to drive the poet either into an arid display of wit, on the one hand, or into sentimental excess, on the other, and the native English distrust of emotion led eighteenth century critics to praise the poet when the intellect had the upper hand. But surely poets have made it clear enough that the intellect is not the distinctive characteristic of the poet. To be intelligent is merely to be human. Intelligence is only a tool, poets have repeatedly insisted, in their quarrel with philosophers. In proportion as one is intelligent within one's own field, one excels, poets would admit. If one is intelligent with respect to fisticuffs one is likely to become a good prize-fighter, but no matter how far refinement of intelligence goes in this direction, it will not make a pugilist into a poet. Intelligence must belong likewise, in signal degree, to the great poet, but it is neither one of the two essential elements in his nature. Augustan critics starved the spiritual element in poetry, even while they imagined that they were feeding it, for in sharpening his wit the poet came no nearer expressing the "poor soul, the center of his sinful earth" than when he reveled in emotion. We no longer believe that in the most truly poetic nature the intelligence of a Pope is joined with the emotionalism of a Rousseau. We believe that the spirituality of a Crashaw is blent with the sensuousness of a Swinburne.

Nineteenth century criticism, since it is almost entirely the work of poets, should not be thus at odds with the conception of the poet expressed in poetry. But although nineteenth century prose criticism moves in the right direction, it is not entirely adequate. The poet is not at his best when he is working in a prose medium. He works too consciously in prose, hence his intuitive flashes are not likely to find expression. After he has tried to express his buried life there, he himself is likely to warn us that what he has said "is well, is eloquent, but 'tis not true." Even Sh.e.l.ley, the most successful of poet-critics, gives us a more vivid comprehension of the poetical balance of sense and spirit through his poet-heroes than through _The Defense of Poetry_, for he is almost exclusively concerned, in that essay, with the spiritual aspect of poetry. He expresses, in fact, the converse of Dryden's view in that he regards the sensuous as negation or dross merely. He a.s.serts:

Few poets of the highest cla.s.s have chosen to exhibit the beauty of their conception in naked truth and splendor, and it is doubtful whether the alloy of costume, habit, etc., be not necessary to temper this planetary music to mortal ears.

The harmony in Sh.e.l.ley's nature which made it possible for his contemporaries to believe him a gross sensualist, and succeeding generations to believe him an angel, is better expressed by Browning, who says:

His n.o.blest characteristic I call his simultaneous perception of Power and Love in the absolute, and of beauty and good in the concrete, while he throws, from his poet-station between them both, swifter, subtler and more numerous films for the connection of each with each than have been thrown by any modern artificer of whom I have knowledge.[Footnote: Preface to the letters of Sh.e.l.ley (afterward found spurious).]

Yet Browning, likewise, gives a more illuminating picture of the poetic nature in his poetry than in his prose.

The peculiar merit of poetry about the poet is that it makes a valuable supplement to prose criticism. We have been tempted to deny that such poetry is the highest type of art. It has seemed that poets, when they are introspective and a.n.a.lytical of their gift, are not in the highest poetic mood. But when we are on the quest of criticism, instead of poetry, we are frankly grateful for such verse. It is a.n.a.lytical enough to be intelligible to us, and still intuitive enough to convince us of its truthfulness. Wordsworth's _Prelude_ has been condemned in certain quarters as "a talking about poetry, not poetry itself," but in part, at least, the _Prelude_ is truly poetry. For this reason it gives us more valuable ideas about the nature of poetry than does the _Preface to the Lyrical Ballads_. If it is worth while to a.n.a.lyze the poetic character at all, then poetry on the poet is invaluable to us.

Perhaps it is too much for us to decide whether the picture of the poet at which we have been gazing is worthy to be placed above Plato's picture of the philosopher. The poet does not contradict Plato's charge against him. His self-portrait bears out the accusation that he is unable to see "the divine beauty--pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality, and all the colors and varieties of human life." [Footnote: _Symposium_, 212.] Plato would agree with the a.n.a.lysis of the poetic character that Keats once struggled with, when he exclaimed,

What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously--I mean _Negative Capability_, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Pentralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge--With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.

Plato would agree with this,--all but the last sentence. Only, in place of the phrase "negative capability," he would subst.i.tute "incapability,"

and reflect that the poet fails to see absolute beauty because he is not content to leave the sensual behind and press on to absolute reality.

It may be that Plato is right, yet one cannot help wishing that sometime a poet may arise of greater power of persuasion than any with whom we have dealt, who will prove to Plato what he appears ever longing to be convinced of, that absolute ideality is not a negation of the sensual, and that poetry, in revealing the union of sense and spirit, is the strongest proof of idealism that we possess. A poet may yet arise who will prove that he is right in refusing to acknowledge that this world is merely a surface upon which is reflected the ideals which const.i.tute reality and which abide in a different realm. The a.s.sumption in that conception is that, if men have spiritual vision, they may apprehend ideals directly, altogether apart from sense. On the contrary, the impression given by the poet is that ideality const.i.tutes the very essence of the so-called physical world, and that this essence is continually striving to express itself through refinement and remolding of the outer crust of things. So, when the world of sense comes to express perfectly the ideal, it will not be a mere representation of reality. It will be reality. If he can prove this, we must acknowledge that, not the rationalistic philosopher, but the poet, grasps reality _in toto_.

However inconclusive his proof, the claims of the poet must fascinate one with their implications. The two aspects of human life, the physical and the ideal, focus in the poet, and the result is the harmony which is art. The fact is of profound philosophical significance, surely, for union of the apparent contradictions of the sensual and the spiritual can only mean that idealism is of the essence of the universe. What is the poetic metaphor but the revelation of an identical meaning in the physical and spiritual world? The sympathetic reader of poetry cannot but see the reflection of the spiritual in the sensual, and the sensual in the spiritual, even as does the poet, and one, as the other, must be by temperament an idealist.