A Study of Poetry by Bliss Perry (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕

For sometimes, assuredly, the synthesis of images seems to take place without the volition of the poet. The hypnotic trance, the narcotic dream or revery, and even our experience of ordinary dreams, provide abundant examples. One dreams, for instance, of a tidal river, flowing in with a gentle full current which bends in one direction all the water-weeds and the long grasses trailing from the banks; then somehow the tide seems to change, and all the water and the weeds and grasses, even the fishes in the stream, turn slowly and flow out to sea. The current synthesizes, harmonizes, moves onward like music,—and we are aware that it is all a dream. Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan,” composed in a deep opium slumber, moves like that, one train of images melting into another like the interwoven figures of a dance led by the “damsel with a dulcimer.” There is no “conscious purpose” whatever, and no “meaning” in the ordinary interpretation of that word. Nevertheless it is perfect integration of imagery, pure beauty to the senses. Something of this rapture in the sheer release of control must have been in Charles Lamb’s mind when he wrote to Coleridge about the “pure happiness” of being insane. “Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid, comparatively so.” (June 10,

1796.)

If “Kubla Khan” represents one extreme, Poe’s account of how he wrote “The Raven” [Footnote: The Philosophy of Composition.] —incredible as the story appears to most of us—may serve to illustrate the other, namely, a cool, conscious, workmanlike control of every element in the selection and combination of imagery. Wordsworth’s naive explanation of the task performed by the imagination in his “Cuckoo” and “Leech-Gatherer” [Footnote: Preface to poems of 1815-1845.] occupies a middle ground. We are at least certain of his entire honesty—and incidentally of his total lack of humor!

“‘Shall I call thee Bird,

Or but a wandering Voice?’

“This concise interrogation characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence; the Imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight….

“‘As a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie

Couched on the bald top of an eminence,

Wonder to all who do the same espy

By what means it could thither come, and whence,

So that it seems a thing endued with sense,

Like a sea-beast crawled forth, which on a shelf

Of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun himself.

Such seemed this Man; not all alive or dead.

Nor all asleep, in his extreme old age.

*

Motionless as a cloud the old Man stood,

That heareth not the loud winds when they call,

And moveth altogether if it move at all.’

“In these images, the conferring, the abstracting, and the modifying powers of the Imagination, immediately and mediately acting, are all brought into conjunction. The stone is endowed with something of the power of life to approximate it to the sea-beast; and the sea-beast stripped of some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure and condition of the aged man; who is divested of so much of the indications of life and motion as to bring him to the point where the two objects unite and coalesce in just comparison.”

Wordsworth’s analysis of the processes of his own imagination, like Poe’s story of the composition of “The Raven,” is an analysis made after the imagination had functioned. There can be no absolute proof of its correctness in every detail. It is evident that we have to deal with an infinite variety of normal and abnormal minds. Some of these defy classification; others fall into easily recognized types, such as “the lunatic, the lover and the poet,” as sketched by Theseus, Duke of Athens. How modern, after all, is the Duke’s little lecture on the psychology of imagination!

“The lunatic, the lover and the poet

Are of imagination all compact;

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,

That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt:

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” [Footnote: Midsummer Night’s Dream, v, i, 7-22.]

Shakspere, it will be observed, does not hesitate to use that dangerous term “the poet!” Yet as students of poetry we must constantly bring ourselves back to the recorded experience of individual men, and from these make our comparisons and generalizations. It may even happen that some readers will get a clearer conception of the selection and synthesis of images if they turn for the moment away from poetry and endeavor to realize something of the same processes as they take place in imaginative prose. In Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, for example, the dominant image, which becomes the symbol of his entire theme, is the piece of scarlet cloth which originally caught his attention. This physical object becomes, after long brooding, subtly changed into a moral symbol of sin and its concealment. It permeates the book, it is borne openly upon the breast of one sufferer, it is written terribly in the flesh of another, it flames at last in the very sky. All the lesser images and symbols of the romance are mastered by it, subordinated to it; it becomes the dominant note in the composition. The romance of The Scarlet Letter is, as we say of any great poem or drama, an “ideal synthesis”; i.e. a putting together of images in accordance with some central idea. The more significant the idea or theme or master image, the richer and fuller are the possibilities of beauty in detail. Apply this familiar law of complexity to a poet’s conscious or unconscious choice of images. In the essay which we have already quoted [Footnote: Studies and Appreciations, p. 216.] Lewis Gates remarks:

“In every artist there is a definite mental bias, a definite spiritual organization and play of instincts, which results in large measure from the common life of his day and generation, and which represents this life—makes it potent—within the individuality of the artist. This so-called ‘acquired constitution of the life of the soul’—it has been described by Professor Dilthey with noteworthy acuteness and thoroughness—determines in some measure the contents of the artist’s mind, for it determines his interests, and therefore the sensations and perceptions that he captures and automatically stores up. It guides him in his judgments of worth, in his instinctive likes and dislikes as regards conduct and character, and controls in large measure the play of his imagination as he shapes the action of his drama or epic and the destinies of his heroes. Its prejudices interfiltrate throughout the molecules of his entire moral and mental life, and give to each image and idea some slight shade of attractiveness or repulsiveness, so that when the artist’s spirit is at work under the stress of feeling, weaving into the fabric of a poem the competing images and ideas in his consciousness, certain ideas and images come more readily and others lag behind, and the resulting work of art gets a colour and an emotional tone and suggestions of value that subtly reflect the genius of the age.”

6. “Imagist” Verse

Such a conception of the association of images as reflecting not only this “acquired constitution of the soul” of the poet but also the genius of the age is in marked contrast to some of the theories held by contemporary “imagists.” As we have already noted, in Chapter II, they stress the individual reaction to phenomena, at some tense moment. They discard, as far as possible, the long “loop-line” of previous experience. As for diction, they have, like all true artists, a horror of the clich�—the rubber-stamp word, blurred by use. As for rhythm, they fear any conventionality of pattern. In subsequent chapters we must look more closely at these matters of diction and of rhythm, but they are both involved in any statement of the principles of Imagist verse. Richard Aldington sums up his article on “The Imagists” [Footnote: “Greenwich Village,” July 15, 1915.] in these words:

“Let me resume the cardinal points of the Imagist style: 1. Direct treatment of the subject. 2. A hardness and economy of speech. 3. Individuality of rhythm; vers libre. 4. The exact word. The Imagists would like to possess ‘le mot qui fait image, l’adjectif inattendu et pr�cis qui dessine de pied en cap et donne la senteur de la chose qu’il est charg� de rendre, la touche juste, la couleur qui chatoie et vibre.’”

In the preface to Imagist Poets (1915), and in Miss Amy Lowell’s Tendencies in Modern American Poetry (1917) the tenets of imagism are stated briefly and clearly. Imagism, we are told, aims to use always the language of common speech, but to employ always the exact word, not the nearly-exact nor the merely decorative word; to create new rhythms—as the expression of new moods—and not to copy old rhythms, which merely echo old moods; to allow absolute freedom in the choice of a subject; to present an image, rendering particulars exactly; to produce poetry that is hard and clear, never blurred or indefinite; to secure condensation.

It will be observed that in the special sort of picture-making which Imagist poetry achieves, the question of free verse is merely incidental. “We fight for it as a principle of liberty,” says Miss Lowell, but she does not insist upon it as the only method of writing poetry. Mr. Aldington admits frankly that about forty per cent of vers libre is prose. Mr. Lowes, as we have already remarked, has printed dozens of passages from Meredith’s novels in the typographical arrangement of free verse so as to emphasize their “imagist” character. One of the most effective is this:

“He was like a Tartar

Modelled by a Greek:

Supple

As the Scythian’s bow,

Braced

As the string!”

Suppose, however, that we agree to defer for the moment the vexed question as to whether images of this kind are to be considered prose or verse. Examine simply for their vivid picture-making quality the collections entitled Imagist Poets (1915,1916,1917), or, in the Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915, such poems as J. G. Fletcher’s “Green Symphony” or “H. D.‘s” “Sea-Iris” or Miss Lowell’s “The Fruit Shop.” Read Miss Lowell’s extraordinarily brilliant volume Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), particularly the series of poems entitled “Towns in Colour.” Then read the author’s preface, in which her artistic purpose in writing “Towns in Colour” is set forth: “In these poems, I have endeavoured to give the colour, and light, and shade, of certain places and hours, stressing the purely pictorial effect, and with little or no reference to any other aspect of the places described. It is an enchanting thing to wander through a city looking for its unrelated beauty, the beauty by which it captivates the sensuous sense of seeing.” [Footnote: Italics mine.]