The Poet's Poet Part 22

Keep up the fire And leave the generous flames to shape themselves.

[Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.]

Whether the poet toils for years to form a shrine for his thought, or whether his awe forbids him to touch his first unconscious formulation of it, there comes a time when all that he can do has been done, and he realizes that he will never approximate his vision more closely than this. Then, indeed, as high as was his rapture during the moment of revelation, so deep is likely to be his discouragement with his powers of creation, for, however fair he may feel his poem to be, it yet does not fill the place of what he has lost. Thus Francis Thompson sighs over the poet,

When the embrace has failed, the rapture fled, Not he, not he, the wild sweet witch is dead, And though he cherisheth The babe most strangely born from out her death, Some tender trick of her it hath, maybe, It is not she.

[Footnote: _Sister Songs_.]

We have called the poet an egotist, and surely, his att.i.tude toward the blind rout who have had no glimpse of the heavenly vision, is one of contemptuous superiority. But like the priest in the temple, all his arrogance vanishes when he ceases to harangue the congregation, and goes into the secret place to wors.h.i.+p. And toward anyone who sincerely seeks the revelation, no matter how feeble his powers may be, the poet's att.i.tude is one of tenderest sympathy and comrades.h.i.+p. Alice Gary pleads,

Hear me tell How much my will transcends my feeble powers, As one with blind eyes feeling out in flowers Their tender hues.

[Footnote: _To the Spirit of Song_.]

And there is not a poet in the last century of such prominence that he does not reverence such a confession, [Footnote: Some poems showing the similarity in such an att.i.tude of great and small alike, follow: _Epistle to Charles C. Clarke_, Keats; _The Soul's Expression_, Mrs.

Browning; _Memorial Verses to Wm. B. Scott_, Swinburne; _Sister Songs_, _Proemion to Love in Dian's Lap_, _A Judgment in Heaven_, Francis Thompson; _Urania_, Matthew Arnold; _There Have Been Vast Displays of Critic Wit_, Alexander Smith; _Invita Minerva_ and _L'Envoi to the Muse_, J. R. Lowell; _The Voiceless_, O. W. Holmes; _Fata Morgana_, and _Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought_, Longfellow; _L'Envoi_, Kipling; _The Apology_, and _Gleam on Me, Fair Ideal_, Lewis Morris; _Dedication to Austin Dobson_, E. Gosse; _A Country Nosegay_, and _Gleaners of Fame_, Alfred Austin; _Another Tattered Rhymster in the Ring_, G. K. Chesterton; _To Any Poet_, Alice Meynell; _The Singer_, and _To a Lady on Chiding Me For Not Writing_, Richard Realf; _The Will and the Wing_ and _Though Dowered with Instincts Keen and High_, P. H.

Haynes; _Dull Words_, Trumbull Stickney; _The Inner Pa.s.sion_, Alfred Noyes; _The Veiled Muse_, William Winter; _Sonnet_, William Bennett; _Tell Me_, Max Ehrmann; _The Singer's Plea_, Edward Dowden; _Genius_, R.

H. Home; _My Country_, George Woodberry; _Uncalled_, Madison Cawein; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, _At the Funeral of a Minor Poet_; Robert Haven Schauffler, _Overtones, The Silent Singers_; Stephen Vincent Benet, _A Minor Poet_; Alec de Candole, _The Poets_.] and aver that he too is an earnest and humble suppliant in the temple of beauty. For the clearer his glimpse of the transcendent vision has been, the more conscious he is of his blindness after the glory has pa.s.sed, and the more unquenchable is his desire for a new and fuller revelation.

CHAPTER V

THE POET'S MORALITY

If English poets of the last century are more inclined to parade their moral virtue than are poets of other countries, this may be the result of a singular persistency on the part of England in searching out and punis.h.i.+ng sins ascribed to poetic temperament. Byron was banished; Sh.e.l.ley was judged unfit to rear his own children; Keats was advertised as an example of "extreme moral depravity"; [Footnote: By _Blackwoods_.]

Oscar Wilde was imprisoned; Swinburne was castigated as "an unclean fiery imp from the pit." [Footnote: By _The Sat.u.r.day Review_.] These are some of the most conspicuous examples of a refusal by the British public to countenance what it considers a code of morals peculiar to poets. It is hardly to be wondered at that verse-writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have not been inclined to quarrel with Sir Philip Sidney's statement that "England is the stepmother of poets," [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry_.] and that through their writings should run a vein of aggrieved protest against an unfair discrimination in dragging their failings ruthlessly out to the light.

It cannot, however, be maintained that England is unique in her prejudice against poetic morals. The charges against the artist have been long in existence, and have been formulated and reformulated in many countries. In fact Greece, rather than England, might with some justice be regarded as the parent of the poet's maligners, for Plato has been largely responsible for the hue and cry against the poet throughout the last two millennia. Various as are the counts against the poet's conduct, they may all be included under the declaration in the _Republic_, "Poetry feeds and waters the pa.s.sions instead of withering and starving them; she lets them rule instead of ruling them."

[Footnote: Book X, 606, Jowett translation.]

Though the accusers of the poet are agreed that the predominance of pa.s.sion in his nature is the cause of his depravity, still they are a heterogeneous company, suffering the most violent disagreement among themselves as to a valid reason for p.r.o.nouncing his pa.s.sionate impulses criminal. Their unfortunate victim is beset from so many directions that he is sorely put to it to defend himself against one band of a.s.sailants without exposing himself to attack from another quarter.

This hostile public may be roughly divided into three camps, made up, respectively, of philistines, philosophers, and puritans. Within recent years the distinct grievance of each group has been made articulate in a formal denunciation of the artist's morals.

There is, first, that notorious indictment, _Degeneration_, by Max Nordau. Nordau speaks eloquently for all who claim the name "average plain citizen," all who would hustle off to the gallows anyone found guilty of breaking the lockstep imposed upon men by convention.

Secondly, there is a severe criticism of the poet from an ostensibly unbiased point of view, _The Man of Genius_, by Cesare Lombroso.

Herein are presented the arguments of the thinkers, who probe the poet's foibles with an impersonal and scientific curiosity. Last, there is the severe arraignment, _What Is Art?_ by Tolstoi. In this book are crystallized the convictions of the ascetics, who recognize in beauty a false G.o.ddess, luring men from the stern pursuit of holiness.

How does it come about that, in affirming the perniciousness of the poet's pa.s.sionate temperament, the man of the street, the philosopher, and the puritan are for the nonce in agreement? The man of the street is not averse to feeling, as a rule, even when it is carried to egregious lengths of sentimentality. A stroll through a village when all the victrolas are in operation would settle this point unequivocally for any doubter. It seems that the philistine's quarrel with the poet arises from the fact that, unlike the makers of phonograph records, the poet dares to follow feeling in defiance of public sentiment. Like the conservative that he is, the philistine gloats over the poet's lapses from virtue because, in setting aside ma.s.s-feeling as a gauge of right and wrong, and in setting up, instead, his own individual feelings as a rule of conduct, the poet displays an arrogance that deserves a fall.

The philosopher, like the philistine, may tolerate feeling within limits. His sole objection to the poet lies in the fact that, far from making emotion the handmaiden of the reason, as the philosopher would do, the poet exalts emotion to a seat above the reason, thus making feeling the supreme arbiter of conduct. The puritan, of course, gives vent to the most bitter hostility of all, for, unlike the philistine and the philosopher, he regards natural feeling as wholly corrupt. Therefore he condemns the poet's indulgence of his pa.s.sionate nature with equal severity whether he is within or without the popular confines of proper conduct, or whether or not his conduct may be proved reasonable.

Much of the inconsistency in the poet's exhibitions of his moral character may be traced to the fact that he is addressing now one, now another, of his accusers. The sobriety of his arguments with the philosopher has sometimes been interpreted by the man of the street as cowardly side-stepping. On the other hand, the poet's bravado in defying the man of the street might be interpreted by the philosopher as an acknowledgment of imperviousness to reason.

It seems as though the first impulse of the poet were to set his back against the wall and deal with all his antagonists at once, by challenging their right to pry into his private conduct. It is true that certain poets of the last century have believed it beneath their dignity to pay any attention to the insults and persecution of the public. But though a number have maintained an air of stolid indifference so long as the attacks have remained personal, few or none have been content to disregard defamation of a departed singer.

The public cannot maintain, in many instances, that this vicarious indignation arises from a sense of sharing the frailties of the dead poet who is the direct object of attack. Not thus may one account for the generous heat of Whittier, of Richard Watson Gilder, of Robert Browning, of Tennyson, in rebuking the public which itches to make a posthumous investigation of a singer's character. [Footnote: See Whittier, _My Namesake_; Richard W. Gilder, _A Poet's Protest_, and _Desecration_; Robert Browning, _House_; Tennyson, _In Memoriam_.]

Tennyson affords a most interesting example of sensitiveness with nothing, apparently, to conceal. There are many anecdotes of his morbid shrinking from public curiosity, wholly in key with his cry of abhorrence,

Now the poet cannot die Nor leave his music as of old, But round him ere he scarce be cold Begins the scandal and the cry: Proclaim the faults he would not show, Break lock and seal; betray the trust; Keep nothing sacred; 'tis but just The many-headed beast should know.

In protesting against the right of the public to judge their conduct, true poets refuse to bring themselves to a level with their accusers by making the easiest retort, that they are made of exactly the same clay as is the _hoi polloi_ that a.s.sails them. This sort of recrimination is characteristic of a certain bl.u.s.tering type of claimant for the t.i.tle of poet, such as Joaquin Miller, a rather disorderly American of the last generation, who dismissed attacks upon the singer with the words,

Yea, he hath sinned. Who hath revealed That he was more than man or less?

[Footnote: _Burns_ and _Byron_.]

The att.i.tude is also characteristic of another anomalous type which flourished in America fifty years ago, whose verse represents an attempted fusion of emasculated poetry and philistine piety. A writer of this type moralizes impartially over the erring bard and his accusers,

Sin met thy brother everywhere, And is thy brother blamed?

From pa.s.sion, danger, doubt and care He no exemption claimed.

[Footnote: Ebenezer Eliot, _Burns_.]

But genuine poets refuse to compromise themselves by admitting that they are no better than other men.

They are not averse, however, to pointing out the unfitness of the public to cast the first stone. So unimpeachable a citizen as Longfellow finds even in the notoriously spotted artist, Benvenuto Cellini, an advantage over his maligners because

He is not That despicable thing, a hypocrite.

[Footnote: _Michael Angelo_.]

Most of the faults charged to them, poets aver, exist solely in the evil minds of their critics. Coleridge goes so far as to expurgate the poetry of William Blake, "not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable want of it in the readers." [Footnote: Letter to Charles Augustus Tulk, Highgate, Thursday Evening, 1818, p. 684, Vol. II, _Letters_, ed. E. Hartley Coleridge.]

The nakedness of any frailties which poets may possess, makes it the more contemptible, they feel, for the public to wrap itself in the cloak of hypocrisy before casting stones. The modern poet's weakness for autobiographical revelation leaves no secret corners in his nature in which surrept.i.tious vices may lurk. One might generalize what Keats says of Burns, "We can see horribly clear in the work of such a man his whole life, as if we were G.o.d's spies." [Footnote: Sidney Colvin, _John Keats_, p. 285.] The Rousseau-like nudity of the poet's soul is sometimes put forward as a plea that the public should close its eyes to possible shortcomings. Yet, as a matter of fact, it is precisely in the lack of privacy characterizing the poet's life that his enemies find their justification for concerning themselves with his morality. Since by flaunting his personality in his verse he propagates his faults among his admirers, the public is surely justified in pointing out and denouncing his failings.

Poets cannot logically deny this. To do so, they would have to confess that their inspirations are wholly unaffected by their personalities.

But this is, naturally, a very unpopular line of defense. That unhappy wors.h.i.+per of puritan morals and of the muses, J. G. Holland, does make such a contention, averring,

G.o.d finds his mighty way Into his verse. The dimmest window panes Let in the morning light, and in that light Our faces s.h.i.+ne with kindled sense of G.o.d And his unwearied goodness, but the gla.s.s Gets little good of it; nay, it retains Its chill and grime beyond the power of light To warm or whiten ...

... The psalmist's soul Was not a fitting place for psalms like his To dwell in overlong, while wanting words.

[Footnote: _Kathrina._]

But the egotism of the average poet precludes this explanation. No more deadly insult could be offered him than forgiveness of his sins on the ground of their unimportance. Far from holding that his personality does not affect his verse, he would have us believe that the sole worth of his poetry lies in its reflection of his unique qualities of soul.

Elizabeth Barrett, not Holland, exhibits the typical poetic att.i.tude when she asks Robert Browning, "Is it true, as others say, that the productions of an artist do not partake of his real nature,--that in the minor sense, man is not made in the image of G.o.d? It is _not_ true, to my mind." [Footnote: Letter to Robert Browning, February 3, 1845.]

The gla.s.s houses in which the poet's accusers may reside really have nothing to do with the question. The immorality of these men is of comparatively slight significance, whereas the importance of the poet's personality is enormous, because it takes on immortality through his works. Not his contemporaries alone, but readers of his verse yet unborn have a right to call him to account for his faults. Though Swinburne muses happily over the sins of Villon,

But from thy feet now death hath washed the mire, [Footnote: _A Ballad of Francois Villon._]

it is difficult to see how he could seriously have advanced such a claim, inasmuch as, a.s.suming Villon's sincerity, the reader, without recourse to a biography, may reconstruct the whole course of his moral history from his writings.

Unquestionably if the poet wishes to satisfy his enemies as to the ethical worth of his poetry, he is under obligation to prove to them that as "the man of feeling" he possesses only those impulses that lead him toward righteousness. And though puritans, philosophers and philistines quarrel over technical points in their conceptions of virtue, still, if the poet is not a criminal, he should be able, by making a plain statement of his innocence, to remove the most heinous charges against him, which bind his enemies into a coalition.

There is no doubt that poets, as a cla.s.s, have acknowledged the obligation of proving that their lives are pure. But the effectiveness of their statements has been largely dissipated by the fact that their voices have been almost drowned by the clamor of a small coterie which finds its chief delight in brazenly exaggerating the vices popularly ascribed to it, then defending them as the poet's exclusive privilege.

So perennially does this group flourish, and so shrill-voiced are its members in self-advertis.e.m.e.nt, that it is useless for other poets to present their case, till the claims of the ostentatiously wicked are heard. One is inclined, perhaps, to dismiss them as pseudo-poets, whose only chance at notoriety is through enunciating paradoxes. In these days when the school has shrunk to Ezra Pound and his followers, vaunting their superiority to the public, "whose virgin stupidity is untemptable," [Footnote: Ezra Pound, _Tensone._] it is easy to dismiss the men and their verse thus lightly. But what is one to say when one encounters the decadent school in the last century, flouris.h.i.+ng at a time when, in the words of George Augustus Scala, the public had to choose between "the clever (but I cannot say moral) Mr. Swinburne, and the moral (but I cannot say clever) Mr. Tupper?" [Footnote: See E.

Gosse, _Life of Swinburne,_ p. 162.] What is one to say of a period wherein the figure of Byron, with his bravado and contempt for accepted morality, towers above most of his contemporaries?

Whatever its justification, the excuse for the poets flaunting an addiction to immorality lies in the obnoxiousness of the philistine element among their enemies. When ma.s.s feeling, ma.s.s-morality, becomes too oppressive, poets are wont to escape from its trammelling conventions at any cost. Rather than consent to lay their emotions under the rubber-stamp of expediency, they are likely to aver, with the sophists of old, that morality is for slaves, whereas the rulers among men, the poets, recognize no law but natural law.

Swinburne affords an excellent example of this type of reaction. Looking back tolerantly upon his early prayers to the pagan ideal to