The Poet's Poet Part 32

Unless the artist keep up open roads Betwixt the seen and unseen, bursting through The best of our conventions with his best, The speakable, imaginable best G.o.d bids him speak, to prove what lies beyond Both speech and imagination.

[Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.]

Thus speaks Mrs. Browning.

The reforms that make a stir in the world, being merely external, mean little or nothing apart from the impulse that started them, and the poet alone is powerful to stir the impulse of reform in humanity. "To be persuaded rests usually with ourselves," said Longinus, "but genius brings force sovereign and irresistible to bear upon every hearer."

[Footnote: _On the Sublime_.] The poet, in ideal mood, is as innocent of specific designs upon current morality as was Pippa, when she wandered about the streets of Asolo, but the power of his songs is ever as insuperable as was that of hers. It is for this reason that Emerson advises the poet to leave hospital building and statute revision for men of duller sight than he:

Oft shall war end and peace return And cities rise where cities burn Ere one man my hill shall climb Who can turn the golden rhyme.

Let them manage how they may, Heed thou only Saadi's lay.

[Footnote: _Saadi_.]

Here the philosopher may demur. If the poet were truly an idealist,--if he found for the world conceptions as pure as those of mathematics, which can be applied equally well to any situation, then, indeed, he might regard himself as the author of progress. But it is the poet's failing that he gives men no vision of abstract beauty. He represents his visions in the contemporary dress of his times. Thus he idealizes the past and the present, showing beauty s.h.i.+ning through the dullness and error of human history. Is he not, then, the enemy of progress, since he will lead his readers to imagine that things are ideal as they are?

Rather, men will be filled with reverence for the idealized portrait of themselves that the poet has drawn, and the intervention of the reformer will be unnecessary, since they will voluntarily tear off the shackles that disfigure them. The poet, said Sh.e.l.ley, "redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man." Emerson said of Wordsworth, "He more than any other man has done justice to the divine in us." Mrs.

Browning said (of Carlyle) "He fills the office of a poet--by a.n.a.lyzing humanity back into its elements, to the destruction of the conventions of the hour." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, February 27, 1845.]

This is what Matthew Arnold meant by calling poetry "a criticism of life." Poetry is captivating only in proportion as the ideal s.h.i.+nes through the sensual; consequently men who are charmed by the beauty incarnate in poetry, are moved to discard all conventions through which beauty does not s.h.i.+ne.

Therefore, the poet repeats, he is the true author of reform. Tennyson says of freedom,

No sword Of wrath her right arm whirled, But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word She shook the world.

[Footnote: _The Poet_.]

This brings us back to our war poets who have so recently died. Did they indeed disparage the Muse whom they deserted? Did they not rather die to fulfill a poet's prophesy of freedom? A poet who did not carry in his heart the courage of his song--what could be more discreditable to poetry than that? The soldier-poets were like a general who rushes into the thick of the fight and dies beside a private. We reverence such a man, but we realize that it was not his death, but his plan for the engagement, that saved the day.

If such is the poet's conception of his service to mankind, what is his reward? The government of society, he returns. Emerson says,

The G.o.ds talk in the breath of the woods, They talk in the shaken pine, And fill the long reach of the old seash.o.r.e With dialogue divine.

And the poet who overhears Some random word they say Is the fated man of men Whom the nations must obey.

[Footnote: Fragment on _The Poet_.]

What is the poet's reward? Immortality. He is confident that if his vision is true he shall join

The choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.

[Footnote: George Eliot, _The Choir Invisible_.]

Does this mean simply the immortality of fame? It is a higher thing than that. The beauty which the poet creates is itself creative, and having the principle of life in it, can never perish. Whitman cries,

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!

Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for, But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known, Arouse! for you must justify me!

[Footnote: _Poets to Come_.]

Browning made the only apparent trace of Sordello left in the world, the s.n.a.t.c.h of song which the peasants sing on the hillside. Yet, though his name be lost, the poet's immortality is sure. For like Socrates in the _Symposium_, his desire is not merely for a fleeting vision of beauty, but for birth and generation in beauty. And the beauty which he is enabled to bring into the world will never cease to propagate itself.

So, though he be as fragile as a windflower, he may a.s.sure himself,

I shall not die; I shall not utterly die, For beauty born of beauty--that remains.

[Footnote: Madison Cawein, _To a Windflower_.]

CHAPTER VIII.

A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT

Not even a paper shortage has been potent to give the lie to the author of _Ecclesiastes_, but it has fanned into flame the long smouldering resentment of those who are wearily conscious that of making many books there is no end. No longer is any but the most confirmed writer suffered to spin out volume after volume in complacent ignorance of his readers'

state of mind, for these victims of eye-strain and nerves turn upon the newest book, the metaphorical last straw on the camel's load, with the exasperated cry, Why? Why? and again Why?

Fortunately for themselves, most of the poets who have taken the poet's character as their theme, indulged their weakness for words before that long-suffering bookworm, the reader, had turned, but one who at the present day drags from cobwebby corners the accusive ma.s.s of material on the subject, must seek to justify, not merely the loquacity of its authors, but one's own temerity as well, in forcing it a second time upon the jaded attention of the public.

If one had been content merely to make an anthology of poems dealing with the poet, one's deed would perhaps have been easier to excuse, for the public has been so often a.s.sured that anthologies are an economical form of publication, and a time-saving form of predigested food, that it usually does not stop to consider whether the material was worth collecting in the first place. Gleaner after gleaner has worked in the field of English literature, sorting and sifting, until almost the last grain, husk, straw and thistle have been gathered and stored with their kind. But instead of making an anthology, we have gone on the a.s.sumption that something more than accidental ident.i.ty of subject-matter holds together the apparently desultory remarks of poets on the subject of the poet's eyebrows, his taste in liquors, his addiction to midnight rambles, and whatnot. We have followed a labyrinthine path through the subject with faith that, if we were but patient in observing the clues, we should finally emerge at a point of vantage on the other side of the woods.

The primary grounds of this faith may have appeared to the skeptic ridiculously inadequate. Our faith was based upon the fact that, more than two thousand years ago, a serious accusation had been made against poets, against which they had been challenged to defend themselves. This led us to conclude that there must be unity of intention in poetry dealing with the poet, for we believed that when English poets talked of themselves and their craft, they were attempting to remove the stigma placed upon the name of poet by Plato's charge.

Now it is easy for a doubter to object that many of the poems on the subject show the poet, not arraying evidence for a trial, but leaning over the brink of introspection in the att.i.tude of Narcissus. One need seek no farther than self-love, it may be suggested, to find the motive for the poet's absorption in his reflection. Yet it is incontrovertible that the self-infatuation of our Narcissus has its origin in the conviction that no one else understands him, and that this conviction is founded upon a very real att.i.tude of hostility on the part of his companions. The lack of sympathy between the English poet and the public is so notorious that Edmund Gosse is able to state as a truism: While in France poetry has been accustomed to reflect the general tongue of the people, the great poets of England have almost always had to struggle against a complete dissonance between their own aims and interests and those of the nation.

The result has been that England, the most inartistic of the modern races, has produced the largest number of exquisite literary artists. [Footnote: _French Profiles_, p. 344.]

Furthermore, even though everyone may agree that a lurking sense of hostile criticism is back of the poet's self-absorption, another ground for skepticism may lie in our a.s.sumption that Plato is the central figure in the opposition. It is usually with purpose to excite the envy of contemporary enemies that poets call attention to their graces, the student may discover. Frequently the quarrels leading them to flaunt their personalities in their verses have arisen over the most personal and ephemeral of issues. Indeed, we may have appeared to falsify in cla.s.sifying their enemies under general heads, when for Christopher North, Judson, Belfair, Friend Naddo, Richard Bame, we subst.i.tuted faces of cipher foolishness, abstractions which we named the puritan, the philosopher, the philistine. Possibly by so doing we have given the impression that poets are beating the air against an abstraction when they are in reality delivering thumping blows upon the body of a personal enemy. And if these generalizations appear indefensible, still more misleading, it may be urged, is an attempt to represent that the poet, when he takes issue with this and that opponent, is answering a challenge hidden away from the unstudious in the tenth book of Plato's _Republic_. It is doubtful even whether a number of our poets are aware of the existence of Plato's challenge, and much more doubtful whether they have it in mind as they write.

Second thought must make it clear, however, that to prove ignorance of Plato's accusation on the part of one poet and another does not at all impair the possibility that it is his accusation which they are answering. So multiple are the threads of influence leading from the _Republic_ through succeeding literatures and civilizations that it is unsafe to a.s.sert, offhand, that any modern expression of hostility to poetry may not be traced, by a patient untangler of evidence, to a source in the _Republic_. But even this is aside from the point.

One might concede that the wide-spread modern antagonism to poetry would have been the same if Plato had never lived, and still maintain that in the _Republic_ is expressed for all time whatever in anti-aesthetic criticism is worthy of a serious answer. Whether poets themselves are aware of it or not, we have a right to a.s.sert that in concerning themselves with the character of the ideal poet, they are responding to Plato's challenge.

This may not be enough to justify our faith that these defensive expositions lead us anywhere. Let us agree that certain poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have answered Plato's challenge. But has the Poet likewise answered it? If from their independent efforts to paint the ideal poet there has emerged a portrait as sculpturally clear in outline as is Plato's portrait of the ideal philosopher, we shall perhaps be justified in saying, Yes, the Poet, through a hundred mouths, has spoken.

Frankly, the composite picture which we have been considering has not sculptural clarity. To the casual observer it bears less resemblance to an alto-relief than to a mosaic; no sooner do distinct patterns spring out of myriad details than they s.h.i.+ft under the onlooker's eyes to a totally different form. All that we can claim for the picture is excellence as a piece of impressionism, which one must scan with half-closed eyes at a calculated distance, if one would appreciate its central conception.

Apparently readers of English poetry have not taken the trouble to scan it with such care. They may excuse their indifference by declaring that an attempt to discover a common aesthetic principle in a collection of views as catholic as those with which we have dealt is as absurd as an attempt to discover philosophical truth by taking a census of general opinion. Still, obvious as are the limitations of a popular vote in determining an issue, it has a certain place in the discovery of truth.

One would not entirely despise the benefit derived from a general survey of philosophers' convictions, for instance. Into the conclusions of each philosopher, even of the greatest, there are bound to enter certain personal whimsicalities of thought, which it is profitable to eliminate, by finding the common elements in the thought of several men. If the quest of a universal least common denominator forces one to give up everything that is of significance in the views of philosophers, there is profit, at least, in learning that the t.i.tle of philosopher does not carry with it a guarantee of truth-telling. On the other hand if we find universal recognition of some fundamental truth, a common _cogito ergo sum_, or the like, acknowledged by all philosophers, we have made a discovery as satisfactory in its way as is acceptance of the complex system of philosophy offered by Plato or Descartes. There seems to be no real reason why it should not be quite as worth while to take a similar census of the views of poets.

After hearkening to the general suffrage of poets on the question of the poet's character, we must bring a serious charge against them if a deafening clamor of contradiction reverberates in our ears. In such a case their claim that they are seers, or masters of harmony, can be worth little. The unbiased listener is likely to a.s.sure us that clamorous contradiction is precisely what the aggregate of poets'

speaking amounts to, but we shall be slow to acknowledge as much. Have we been merely the dupe of pretty phrasing when we felt ourselves insured against discord by the testimony of Keats? Hear him:

How many bards gild the lapses of time!

... Often, when I sit me down to rhyme, These will in throngs before my mind intrude, But no confusion, no disturbance rude Do they occasion; 'tis a pleasing chime.

However incompatible the characteristics of the poets celebrated by Wordsworth and by Swinburne, by Christina Rossetti and by Walt Whitman may have seemed in immediate juxtaposition, we have trusted that we need only retire to a position where "distance of recognizance bereaves"

their individual voices, in order to detect in their mingled notes "pleasing music, and not wild uproar."

The critic who condemns as wholly discordant the variant notes of our mult.i.tudinous verse-writers may point out that we should have had more right to expect concord if we had shown some discernment in sifting true poets from false. Those who have least claim to the t.i.tle of poet have frequently been most garrulous in voicing their convictions. Moreover, these pseudo-poets outnumber genuine poets one hundred to one, yet no one in his right mind would contend that their expressions of opinion represent more than a straw vote, if they conflict with the judgment of a single true poet.

Still, our propensity for listening to the rank breath of the mult.i.tude is not wholly indefensible. In the first place pseudo-poets have not created so much discord as one might suppose. A lurking sense of their own worthlessness has made them timid of utterance except as they echo and prolong a note that has been struck repeatedly by singers of reputation. This echoing, it may be added, has sometimes been effective in bringing the traditions of his craft to the attention of a young singer as yet unaware of them. Thus Bowles and Chivers, neither of whom has very strong claim to the t.i.tle of bard, yet were in a measure responsible for the minor note in Coleridge's and Poe's description of the typical poet.

Even when the voices of spurious bards have failed to chime with the others, the resulting discord has not been of serious moment. A counterfeit coin may be as good a touchstone for the detection of pure silver, as is pure silver for the detection of counterfeit. Not only are a reader's views frequently clarified by setting a poetaster beside a poet as a foil, but poets themselves have clarified their views because they have been incited by declarations in false verse to express their convictions more unreservedly than they should otherwise have done.

Pseudo-poets have sometimes been of genuine benefit by their exaggeration of some false note which they have adopted from poetry of the past. No sooner do they exaggerate such a note, than a concerted shout of protest from true poets drowns the erroneous statement, and corrects the misleading impression which careless statements in earlier verse might have left with us. Thus the morbid singer exhibited in minor American verse of the last century, and the vicious singer lauded in one strain of English verse, performed a genuine service by calling forth repudiation, by major poets, of traits which might easily lead a singer in the direction of morbidity and vice.

The confusion of sound which our critic complains of is not to be remedied merely by silencing the chorus of echoic voices. If we dropped from consideration all but poets of unquestionable merit, we should not be more successful in detecting a single clear note, binding all their voices together. When the ideal poet of Sh.e.l.ley is set against that of Byron, or that of Matthew Arnold against that of Browning, there is no more unison than when great and small in the poetic world are allowed to speak indiscriminately.