A Study of Poetry Part 4

The plasticity of the world as it appears to the mind of the poet is clearly evidenced by the swarm of images which present themselves to the poet's consciousness. In the re-presentation of these pictures to us the poet is forced, of course, to use verbal images. The precise point at which he becomes conscious of employing words no doubt varies with the individual, and depends upon the relative balance of auditory, visual or tactile images in his mind. Swinburne often impresses us as working primarily with the "stuff" of word-sounds, as Browning with the stuff of sharp-cut tactile or motor images, and Victor Hugo with the stuff of visual impressions. But in each case the poet's sole medium of _expression to us_ is through verbal symbols, and it is hard to get behind these into the real workshop of the brain where each poet is busily minting his own peculiar raw material into the current coin of human speech.

Nevertheless, many poets have been sufficiently conscious of what is going on within their workshop to tell us something about it. Professor Fairchild has made an interesting collection [Footnote: _The Making of Poetry_, pp. 78, 79.]

of testimony relating to the tumultuous crowding of images, each clamoring, as it were, for recognition and crying "take me!" He instances, as other critics have done, the extraordinary succession of images by which Sh.e.l.ley strives to portray the spirit of the skylark. The similes actually chosen by Sh.e.l.ley seem to have been merely the lucky candidates selected from an infinitely greater number. In Francis Thompson's captivating description of Sh.e.l.ley as a glorious child the reader is conscious of the same initial rush of images, although the medium of expression here is heightened prose instead of verse: [Footnote: _Dublin Review_, July, 1908.]

"Coming to Sh.e.l.ley's poetry, we peep over the wild mask of revolutionary metaphysics, and we see the winsome face of the child.

Perhaps none of his poems is more purely and typically Sh.e.l.leian than The Cloud, and it is interesting to note how essentially it springs from the faculty of make-believe. The same thing is conspicuous, though less purely conspicuous, throughout his singing; it is the child's faculty of make-believe raised to the nth power. He is still at play, save only that his play is such as manhood stops to watch, and his playthings are those which the G.o.ds give their children. The universe is his box of toys. He dabbles his fingers in the day-fall.

He is gold-dusty with tumbling amidst the stars. He makes bright mischief with the moon. The meteors nuzzle their noses in his hand.

He teases into growling the kennelled thunder, and laughs at the shaking of its fiery chain. He dances in and out of the gates of heaven: its floor is littered with his broken fancies. He runs wild over the fields of ether. He chases the rolling world. He gets between the feet of the horses of the sun. He stands in the lap of patient Nature, and twines her loosened tresses after a hundred wilful fas.h.i.+ons, to see how she will look nicest in his song."

_5. The Selection and Control of Images_

It is easier, no doubt, to realize something of the swarming of images in the stream of consciousness than it is to understand how these images are selected, combined and controlled. Some principle of a.s.sociation, some law governing the synthesis, there must be; and English criticism has long treasured some of the clairvoyant words of Coleridge and Wordsworth upon this matter. The essential problem is suggested by Wordsworth's phrase "the manner in which we a.s.sociate ideas in a state of excitement." Is the "excitement," then, the chief factor in the selection and combination of images, and do the "feelings," as if with delicate tentacles, instinctively choose and reject and integrate such images as blend with the poet's mood?

Coleridge, with his subtle builder's instinct, uses his favorite word "synthesis" not merely as applied to images as such, but to all the faculties of the soul:

"The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and a spirit of unity, that blends, and as it were fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination." "Synthetic and magical power," indeed, with a Coleridge as Master of the Mysteries! But the perplexed student of poetry may well wish a more exact description of what really takes place.

An American critic, after much searching in recent psychological explanations of artistic creation, attempts to describe the genesis of a poem in these words: [Footnote: Lewis E. Gates, _Studies and Appreciations_, p. 215. Macmillan, 1900.]

"The poet concentrates his thought on some concrete piece of life, on some incident, character, or bit of personal experience; because of his emotional temperament, this concentration of interest stirs in him a quick play of feeling and prompts the swift concurrence of many images. Under the incitement of these feelings, and in accordance with laws of a.s.sociation that may at least in part be described, these images grow bright and clear, take definite shapes, fall into significant groupings, branch and ramify, and break into sparkling mimicry of the actual world of the senses--all the time delicately controlled by the poet's conscious purpose and so growing intellectually significant, but all the time, if the work of art is to be vital, impelled also in their alert weaving of patterns by the moods of the poet, by his fine instinctive sense of the emotional expressiveness of this or that image that lurks in the background of his consciousness. For this intricate web of images, tinged with his most intimate moods, the poet through his intuitive command of words finds an apt series of sound-symbols and records them with written characters. And so a poem arises through an exquisite distillation of personal moods into imagery and into language, and is ready to offer to all future generations its undiminis.h.i.+ng store of spiritual joy and strength."

A better description than this we are not likely to find, although some critics would question the phrase, "all the time delicately controlled by the poet's conscious purpose."

[Footnote: "Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.'. . . It is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind. ... Its birth and recurrence have no necessary connection with the consciousness or will." Sh.e.l.ley, _A Defense of Poetry_.]

For sometimes, a.s.suredly, 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 gra.s.ses trailing from the banks; then somehow the tide seems to change, and all the water and the weeds and gra.s.ses, 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 a.s.similate 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 a.n.a.lysis of the processes of his own imagination, like Poe's story of the composition of "The Raven," is an a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.sification; 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 h.e.l.l 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 const.i.tution 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 a.s.sociation of images as reflecting not only this "acquired const.i.tution 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 _cliche_--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 precis qui dessine de pied en cap et donne la senteur de la chose qu'il est charge 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 pa.s.sages 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 ent.i.tled _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 ent.i.tled "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.]

Nothing could be more gallantly frank than the phrase "unrelated beauty."

For it serves as a touchstone to distinguish between those imagist poems which leave us satisfied and those which do not. Sometimes, a.s.suredly, the insulated, unrelated beauty is enough. What delicate reticence there is in Richard Aldington's "Summer":

"A b.u.t.terfly, Black and scarlet, Spotted with white, Fans its wings Over a privet flower.

"A thousand crimson foxgloves, Tall b.l.o.o.d.y pikes, Stand motionless in the gravel quarry; The wind runs over them.

"A rose film over a pale sky Fantastically cut by dark chimneys; Across an old city garden."

The imagination asks no more.

Now read my friend Baker Brownell's "Sunday Afternoon":

"The wind pushes huge bundles Of itself in warm motion Through the barrack windows; It rattles a sheet of flypaper Tacked in a smear of suns.h.i.+ne on the sill.

A voice and other voices squirt A slow path among the room's tumbled sounds.

A ukelele somewhere clanks In accidental jets Up from the room's background."

Here the stark truthfulness of the images does not prevent an instinctive "Well, what of it?" "And afterward, what else?" Unless we adopt the j.a.panese theory of "stop poems," where the implied continuation of the mood, the suggested application of the symbol or allegory, is the sole justification of the actual words given, a great deal of imagist verse, in my opinion, serves merely to sharpen the senses without utilizing the full imaginative powers of the mind. The making of images is an essential portion of the poet's task, but in memorably great poetry it is only a detail in a larger whole. Miss Lowell's "Patterns" is one of the most effective of contemporary poems, but it is far more than a doc.u.ment of imagism. It is a triumph of structural imagination.