Thamyris

There is another legend concerning the ancient Hellenic Muses, which I would here like to recall. It is said that one of their most gifted and distinguished pupils, the Thessalian bard Thamyris, having made certain innovations in the orthodox technique of poetry, and having moreover enlarged its boundaries by annexing subject-matter that had hitherto been considered beneath the dignity of classic art, one day had the audacity to challenge his august schoolmistresses to a contest of song. Apollo was the umpire, and he, as might have been expected, adjudged the victory to his divine relatives. The presumptuous mortal was condemned to lose his eyes, and forbidden henceforth to practise the sacred art of poesy. The baser medium of prose would be good enough for such renegade impostors. But the result was far different from what the Goddesses had expected. Thamyris, though blinded, remained recalcitrant, and retaining all his former skill and genius, like his remote descendants, blind Maeonides and Milton, continued to produce masterpiece after masterpiece. Worse still, he became a popular hero among the miserable mortal multitude, who naturally sided with the victim of divine jealousy. Moreover Thamyris soon afterwards became the father of a numerous family, and their descendants, multiplying throughout the world, inherited, not his blindness, but his poetical gifts. Thus it comes about that all true poets and lovers of poetry are children of Thamyris, and little though they know it, have each some few drops of his inspired and rebellious blood running in their veins. If the Muses had wished effectively to stamp out heresy, they would have been wiser had they followed the example of Apollo, who flayed alive that other æsthetic mutineer, Marsyas, thus robbing him not only of life, but of the hope of heretical offspring.

Now it appears to me that this tale must have been a prophetic fable, intended to symbolise certain important aspects of man’s poetic evolution. If the Muses and Apollo represent the established, conservative tradition of poetry, then in Thamyris must be embodied the perennial revolt of the creative younger generation against the prestige and authority of the past. Though the penalty of rebellion may sometimes be blindness, egoism and eccentricity, yet the sacred fire will remain alive in the heart of the rebel, and will be handed down by him to his posterity, who, themselves neither blind nor mutinous, will often become in turn the persecutors of their own children. Thus the divine flame will never cease to burn, and generation after generation the youth of poetry will be renewed.

Nevertheless there are those who take a gloomier view of man’s destinies. Poetry, they tell us, like mythology, religion and metaphysics, is a primitive and puerile function of the human mind. It is already becoming superseded by less rudimentary, more rational means of self-expression. We are entering upon an era of science and prose, and may as well at once frankly put away poetry, along with other childish things. At the beginning of this essay I have tried to suggest how much and how little truth there may be in this view. I have admitted that the dissociation of poetry from music and intonation has to a great extent diminished the immediate potency of its sensuous and emotional appeal; but I have argued that the new medium of spoken verse, although it may have grown more similar to prose, is yet very far from being identical with it, either formally, or in the nature of its subject-matter. Prose is the more transparent, self-effacing instrument. Its value consists not so much in itself (though it may possess a real sensuous charm and beauty of its own), but rather in its intellectual content and the knowledge it conveys. But the value of poetry resides primarily in the medium itself. If that be not beautiful, then verse is a thing of naught, and worse than naught. None the less poetry should be no mere meaningless verbal incantation, nor yet a melodious transmitter of congenial lies and irresponsible reverie. It is a means of discourse, of which the content should be neither science nor history nor speculation in their abstract purity, but all these and much else besides, enveloped and humanised by emotion, and presented with all the moving pathos and beauty which is inherent in them, but which the less imaginative prosaic medium cannot so effectually reveal. So long as human nature remains what it is now, as in spite of cynical prognostications it is likely to do for some time to come, it will both demand and obtain satisfaction for its ideal needs from literature, as well as from the musical and plastic arts: and in fact, if verse were to be proscribed or abandoned by general consent, we should be soon compelled to find an awkward substitute for it in rhythmical or poetic prose. Yet, in spite of the beauty and grandeur of our translations of biblical Hebrew verse, and of certain majestical passages in such writers as Sir Thomas Browne, rhythmical prose has seldom proved itself able to compete with formal poetry. It is too primitive, too monotonous and cumbersome to perform more than a small part of the various functions of modern spoken verse, to which we should inevitably be driven before long to revert.

Yet though the disappearance of poetry is unlikely, and would be a real disaster, it is much to be desired that poetry should become more rational and responsible, more intelligently aware of the best interests and ideals of its most civilised contemporaries. It would be childish and unwise for poets to disregard the fact that our habits of mind are growing continually more scientific. The function of the imagination is to interpret and illuminate reality, and it cannot therefore neglect or despise the normal aspects under which reality presents itself to the human mind. But it must also appeal to the human heart; and since the passions and dreams of the heart are less mutable than the intellect, it is in this respect that the nature of poetry is least likely to suffer any fundamental change. The garment in which it clothes itself will alter, as language alters, and as poets of genius are moved to enlarge or contract it. As long as men use articulate speech, some few among them will take delight in moulding it into rhythmical forms of harmonious beauty, in order to find the most perfect expression for the intimate desires and movements of the soul.

Perhaps I should have been more prudent if I had confined my discussion to the more purely technical aspect of poetry, without venturing upon the dangerous sea of general reflections upon style and theme, attitude and tendency. I have at least tried to refrain from dogma and prophecy, and attempted rather to suggest future possibilities by drawing attention to the lessons which we can still learn from the past. It may well be that the only really profitable discussions about poetry are technical discussions. “The thought of man is not triable. Even the Devil knoweth not the thought of man,” said the old legal maxim. And so, to my mind, the thought, the soul of the Muse of modern poetry is not triable, nor discussable; but her actions are. And what else are her actions but her successes and failures in exploiting her medium? Although her golden age may seem to lie in the past, and her future be uncertain and beset with perils, yet there is no need to despair of her salvation. To revert to the apologue with which I began, though I may feel some sympathy with the celestial point of view, I am not really on the side of the angels.