ON ENGLISH POETRY

The greater part of this book will appear controversial, but any critic who expects me to argue on what I have written, is begged kindly to excuse me; my garrison is withdrawn without a shot fired and his artillery may blow the fortress to pieces at leisure. These notebook reflections are only offered as being based on the rules which regulate my own work at the moment, for many of which I claim no universal application and have promised no lasting regard. They have been suggested from time to time mostly by particular problems in the writing of my last two volumes of poetry. Hesitating to formulate at present a comprehensive water-tight philosophy of poetry, I have dispensed with a continuous argument, and so the sections either stand independently or are intended to get their force by suggestive neighbourliness rather than by logical catenation. The names of the glass houses in which my name as an authority on poetry lodges at present, are to be found on a back page.

R. G.

Islip,
Oxford.

THERE are two meanings of Poetry as the poet himself has come to use the word:—first, Poetry, the unforeseen fusion in his mind of apparently contradictory emotional ideas; and second, Poetry, the more-or-less deliberate attempt, with the help of a rhythmic mesmerism, to impose an illusion of actual experience on the minds of others. In its first and peculiar sense it is the surprise that comes after thoughtlessly rubbing a mental Aladdin’s lamp, and I would suggest that every poem worthy of the name has its central idea, its nucleus, formed by this spontaneous process; later it becomes the duty of the poet as craftsman to present this nucleus in the most effective way possible, by practising poetry more consciously as an art. He creates in passion, then by a reverse process of analyzing, he tests the implied suggestions and corrects them on common-sense principles so as to make them apply universally.

Here eighth and face seemed perfect rhymes, to the sleeping ear, the spirit was magnificent, the implications astonishing; but the waking poet was forced to laugh. I believe that in the first draft of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, Abora was the rhyme for Dulcimer, as:—

because “saw” seems too self-conscious an assonance and too far removed from “Abora” to impress us as having been part of the original dream poem. “Could I revive within me” again is surely written in a waking mood, probably after the disastrous visit of the man from Porlock.

The true Epic appears to me as an organic growth of dramatic scenes, presented in verse which only becomes true poetry on occasion; but these scenes are so placed in conflicting relation that between them they compose a central theme of Poetry not to be found in the detachable parts, and this theme is a study of the interactions of the ethical principles of opposing tribes or groups. In the Iliad, for instance, the conflict is not only between the Trojan and Greek ideas, but between groups in each camp. In the Odyssey it is between the ethics of sea-wandering and the ethics of the dwellers on dry land. I would be inclined to deny the Beowulf as an epic, describing it instead as a personal allegory in epical surroundings. The Canterbury Tales are much nearer to an English Epic, the interacting principles being an imported Eastern religion disguised in Southern dress and a ruder, more vigorous Northern spirit unsubdued even when on pilgrimage.

I wonder if there are as many genuine Muses as the traditional nine; I cannot help thinking that one or two of them have been counted twice over. But the point of this section is to show the strong family likeness between three or four of them at least.

Between verse, bad poetry and fake poetry, there is a great distinction. Bad poetry is simply the work of a man who solves his emotional problems to his own satisfaction but not to anybody else’s. Fake poetry, the decay of poetry, corresponds exactly with fake magic, the decay of true magic. It happens that some member of the priestly caste, finding it impossible to go into a trance when required, even with the aid of intoxicants, has to resort to subterfuge. He imitates a state of trance, recalls some one else’s dream which he alters slightly, and wraps his oracular answer in words recollected from the lips of genuine witch doctors. He takes care to put his implied meaning well to the fore and the applicants give him payment and go away as well pleased with their money’s worth as the readers of Tupper, Montgomery and Wilcox with the comfortable verses supplied them under the trade name of “Poetry.”

THE suggestion that an emotional conflict is necessary for the birth of true poetry will perhaps not be accepted without illustrative instances. But one need only take any of the most famous lines from Elizabethan drama, those generally acknowledged as being the most essential poetry, and a battle of the great emotions, faith, hope or love against fear, grief or hate, will certainly appear; though one side may indeed be fighting a hopeless battle.

When Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is waiting for the clock to strike twelve and the Devil to exact his debt, he cries out:

Far less do they see how Marlowe has made the lust of life, in its hopeless struggle against the devils coming to bind it for the eternal bonfire, tragically unable to find any better expression than this feeble over-sweetness; so that there follows with even greater insistence of fate:—

When Lady Macbeth, sleep-walking, complains that “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,” these perfumes are not merely typically sweet smells to drown the reek of blood. They represent also her ambitions for the luxury of a Queen, and the conflict of luxurious ambition against fate and damnation is as one-sided as before. Or take Webster’s most famous line in his Duchess of Malfi:

spoken by Ferdinand over the Duchess’ body; and that word “dazzle” does duty for two emotions at once, sun-dazzled awe at loveliness, tear-dazzled grief for early death.

There is no pity either for Hume’s lover who suddenly discovers that he has been making a sad song about nothing, or for Marvell’s glow-worms and their rusticity and slightness of aim. In the first case Love stands up in its glory against the feeble whining of minor poets; in the second, thoughts of terror and majesty, the heavens themselves blazing forth the death of princes, conflict ineffectually with security and peace, the evening glow-worm prophesying fair weather for mowing next morning, and meanwhile lighting rustic lovers to their tryst.

In this way the poet may be compared with a father piecing together a picture-block puzzle for his children. He surprises them at last by turning over the completed picture, and showing them that by the act of assembling the scattered parts of “Red Riding Hood with the Basket of Food” he has all the while been building up unnoticed underneath another scene of the tragedy—“The Wolf eating the Grandmother.”

The analogy can be more closely pressed; careless arrangement of the less important pieces or wilfully decorative borrowing from another picture altogether may look very well in the upper scene, but what confusion below!

PEOPLE are always enquiring how exactly poets get their “inspiration,” perhaps in the hope that it may happen to themselves one day and that if they know the signs in advance, something profitable may come of it.

It is a difficult conundrum, but I should answer somehow like this:—The poet is consciously or unconsciously always either taking in or giving out; he hears, observes, weighs, guesses, condenses, idealizes, and the new ideas troop quietly into his mind until suddenly every now and again two of them violently quarrel and drag into the fight a group of other ideas that have been loitering about at the back of his mind for years; there is great excitement, noise and bloodshed, with finally a reconciliation and drinks all round. The poet writes a tactful police report on the affair and there is the poem.

Or, to put it in a more sober form:—

When conflicting issues disturb his mind, which in its conscious state is unable to reconcile them logically, the poet acquires the habit of self-hypnotism, as practised by the witch doctors, his ancestors in poetry.

I speak of this process of composition as self-hypnotism because on being interrupted the poet experiences the disagreeable sensations of a sleep-walker disturbed, and later finds it impossible to remember how the early drafts of a poem ran, though he may recall every word of a version which finally satisfied his conscious scrutiny. Confronted afterwards with the very first draft of the series he cannot in many cases decipher his own writing, far less recollect the process of thought which made him erase this word and substitute that. Many poets of my acquaintance have corroborated what I have just said and also observed that on laying down their pens after the first excitement of composition they feel the same sort of surprise that a man finds on waking from a “fugue,” they discover that they have done a piece of work of which they never suspected they were capable; but at the same moment they discover a number of trifling surface defects which were invisible before.

Out of an open window he jumped and into a small enclosed yard; with the help of a handy rainwater tub he climbed the opposite wall, then dashed down a pathway through a shrubbery and finding the front door of a deserted cottage standing open, rushed in and upstairs, then breathlessly flinging into an empty room at the stairhead, slammed the door.

By so slamming the door he had locked it and on recovering his presence of mind found himself a close prisoner, for the only window was stoutly barred and the door lock was too massive to break. Here then, he stayed in confinement for three days, suffering severely until released by an accomplice of Mr. Poeta, who affected to be much surprised at finding him there and even threatened an action for trespass. But cold, hungry and thirsty, Mr. Lector had still had for companion in his misery a coverless copy of Chaucer which he found lying in the grate and which he read through from beginning to end with great enjoyment, thereupon reconsidering his previous estimate of the poet’s greatness.

FABLES and analogies serve very well instead of the psychological jargon that would otherwise have to be used in a discussion of the poet’s mental clockwork, but they must be supported wherever possible by definite instances, chapter and verse. An example is therefore owed of how easily and completely the poet can deceive his readers once he has assumed control of their imagination, hypnotizing them into a receptive state by indirect sensuous suggestions and by subtle variations of verse-melody; which hypnotism, by the way, I regard as having a physical rather than a mental effect and being identical with the rhythmic hypnotism to which such animals as snakes, elephants or apes are easily subject.

Among Jubilee bonfires; village sports of running, cricket, football; a rustic murder; the London and North Western Railway; the Shropshire Light Infantry; ploughs; lovers on stiles or in long grass; the ringing of church bells; and then this suicide by shooting, no reader is prepared for the appearance of the historic Son of Sorrow. The poet has only to call the Cross a gallows-tree and make the Crucified call His disciples “Lads” instead of “My Brethren” or “Children,” and we are completely deceived.

In our almost certain failure to recognize Him in this context lies, I believe, the intended irony of the poem which is strewn with the plainest scriptural allusions.

It is obviously impossible to analyze with accuracy the various elements that once combined to make a phrase in the mind of a poet long dead, but for the sake of illustration here is a fanciful reconstruction of the clash of ideas that gave us Milton’s often quoted “Gadding Vine.” The words, to me, represent an encounter between the poet’s sub-personalities “B” and “C.” Says “B”:—

“What a gentle placid fruitful plant the vine is; I am thinking of putting it in one of my speeches as emblem of the kindly weakness of the Vegetables.”

C replies very tartly:—

“Anyhow, the juice of the vine makes you gad about pretty lively, sometimes,” says C.

“Grapes are the conventional fruit for the sick-room,” retorts B.

“Well, what did the Greeks think about it?” pursues C. “Wasn’t Dionysos the god of the Vine? He didn’t stop rooted all his life in some miserable little Greek valley. He went gadding off to India and brought back tigers.”

“If you are going to appeal to the poets,” returns B, “you can’t disregard the position of the vine in decorative art. It has been conventionalized into the most static design you can find, after the lotus. When I say Vine, that’s quite enough for me, just V for vegetable.”

They are interrupted by A the master spirit who says with authority:—

“Silence, the two of you! I rule a compromise. Call it a “gadding vine” and have done with it.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE question of why Poets suddenly seem to come to a dead end and stop writing true Poetry, is one that has always perplexed literary critics, and the poets themselves still more. The explanation will probably be found in two causes.

In the first case the poet’s preoccupation with the clash of his emotions has been transmuted into a calmer state of meditation on philosophic paradox: but poetry being, by accepted definition, sensuous and passionate is no vehicle of expression for this state. Impersonal concepts can perhaps be expressed in intellectual music, but in poetry the musical rhythm and word-texture are linked with a sensuous imagery too gross for the plane of philosophic thought. Thus dithyramb, by which I mean the essentially musical treatment of poetry in defiance of the sense of the words used, is hardly a more satisfactory medium than metaphysical verse: in which even a lyrical sugar-coating to the pill cannot induce the childish mood of poetry to accept philosophic statements removed beyond the plane of pictorial allegory.

Distinction ought to be drawn between the poet and the man who has written poetry. There are certainly men of only one poem, a James Clarence Mangan, a Christopher Smart, a Julian Grenfell (these are instances more convenient than accurate) who may be explained either as born poets, tortured with a lifelong mental conflict, though able perhaps only once in their life to “go under” to their own self-hypnotism, or as not naturally poets at all but men who write to express a sudden intolerable clamour in their brain; this is when circumstances have momentarily alienated the usually happy members of their mental family, but once the expression has brought reconciliation, there is no further need of poetry, and the poet born out of due time, ceases to be.

THE poet’s quarrelsome lesser personalities to which I have referred are divided into camps by the distinction of sex. But in a poet the dominant spirit is male and though usually a feminist in sympathy, cannot afford to favour the women at the expense of his own sex. This amplifies my distrust of poets with floppy hats, long hair, extravagant clothes and inverted tendencies. Apollo never to my knowledge appears in Greek art as a Hermaphrodite, and the Greeks understood such problems far better than we do. I know it is usual to defend these extravagances of dress by glorifying the Elizabethan age; but let it be remembered that Edmund Spenser himself wore “short hair, little bands and little cuffs.”

This matter of dress may seem unimportant, but people are still so shy of acknowledging the poet in his lifetime as a gifted human being who may have something important to say, that any dressing up or unnecessary strutting does a great deal of harm.

I am convinced that this extravagant dressing up tendency, like the allied tendency to unkemptness, is only another of the many forms in which the capricious child spirit which rules our most emotional dreams is trying also to dominate the critical, diligent, constructive man-spirit of waking life, without which the poet is lost beyond recovery. Shelley was a great poet not because he enjoyed sailing paper boats on the Serpentine but because, in spite of this infantile preference he had schooled his mind to hard thinking on the philosophical and political questions of the day and had made friends among men of intellect and sophistication.