{"id":1282,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:50","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1282"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:50","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:50","slug":"12-the-course-of-english-poetry-3-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/09-the-future-poetry-volume-09\/12-the-course-of-english-poetry-3-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-12_The Course of English Poetry \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 3.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\n<\/span>XI<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>        The Course of English
\nPoetry \u2013 3<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font><\/span>T<\/font>HE Elizabethan drama is an
\nexpression of the stir of the life-spirit; at its best it is great or strong,
\nbuoyant or rich or beautiful, passionately excessive or gloomily tenebrous force
\nof vital poetry. The ret of the utterance of the time is full of the lyric joy,
\nsweetness or emotion or moved and coloured self-description of the same spirit.
\nThere is much in it of curious and delighted thinking, but little of a high and
\nfirm intellectual value. Culture is still in its imaginative childhood and the
\nthinking mind rather works for the curiosity and beauty of thought and even
\nmore for the curiosity and beauty of the mere expression of thought than for
\nits light and its vision. The poetry which comes out of this mood is likely to
\nhave great charm and imaginative, emotional or descriptive appeal, but may very
\nwell miss that depth of profounder substance and that self-possessing plenitude
\nof form which are the other characteristics of a rounded artistic creation.
\nBeauty of poetical expression abounds in an unstinted measure, but for the
\nmusic of a deeper spirit or higher significance we have to wait; the attempt at
\nit we get, but not often all the success of its presence. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Spenser, the poet of second
\nmagnitude of the time, gives us in his work this beauty in its fullest
\nabundance but also the limited measure of this deeper but not quite successful
\nendeavour. The Faerie Queene<\/i> is indeed a poem of unfailing imaginative
\ncharm and its two opening cantos are exquisite in execution; a stream of liquid
\nharmony, of curiously opulent, yet finely tempered description, of fluid
\npoetical phrase and minutely seen image, -for these are Spenser\u2019s constant
\ngifts, the native form of his genius which displays more of descriptive vision
\nthan of the larger creative power or narrative force, -they work out an
\ninspired idea, a little too much lost in detail and in the diffusion of a
\nwealthy prolixity but still holding well together its rather <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 75<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

difficult
\nand entangling burden of symbols and forms and achieving in the end some
\naccomplished totality of fine poetic effect. But if we look at the poem as a
\nwhole, the effect intended fails, not because it happened to be left
\nunfinished, nor even because the power in it is not equally sustained and is
\ntoo evidently running thinner and thinner as it proceeds, but because it could
\nnot have come to a successful completion. Kalidasa\u2019s Birth of the War-God<\/i>
\nwe left unfinished, or finished by a very inferior hand, yet even in the
\nfragment there is already masterly totality of effect; there is the sense of a
\ngreat and admirable design. Virgil\u2019 Aeneid,<\/i> though in a way finished,
\ndid not receive those last touches which sometimes make all the difference
\nbetween perfection and the approach to it, and we feel too, not a failure of
\nart, -for that is a defect which could never be alleged against Virgil, -but a
\nrelative thinning of the supporting power and inspiration. Still the consummate
\nartistic intelligence of the poet has been so steadily at work, so complete
\nfrom the very inception, it has so thought out and harmonized its idea from the
\nbeginning that a fine and firm total effect is still given.\u00a0 <\/span>But here there is a defect of the artistic
\nintellect, a vice or insufficiency in its original power of harmonizing
\nconstruction, characteristic of the Elizabethan, almost of the English mind. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Spenser\u2019s intention seems to have
\nbeen to combine in his own way the success of Ariosto with the success of
\nDante. His work was to have been a rich and beautiful romance and at the same
\ntime a great interpretation by image and symbol, not here of the spiritual but
\nof the ethical meaning of human life. A faery-tale and an ethical symbol in one
\nis his conception of his artistic task. That is a kind of combination difficult
\nenough to execute, but capable of a great and beautiful effect in a master
\nhand; it had been achieved with supreme success by Homer and Valmiki. But the
\nElizabethan intellectual direction runs always towards conceit and curious complication
\nand it is unable to follow an idea for the sake of what is essential in it, but
\ntangles it up in all sorts of turns and accessories; seizing on all manner of
\ndisparates it tends to throw them together without any real fusion. Spenser in
\nhis idea and its execution fell a victim to all these defects of the
\nintelligence. He had taken his intellectual <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 76<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

scheme
\nfrom his Hellenism, the virtues to be figured in typical human beings, but
\ndressed it up with the obvious mediaeval ingenuity of the allegory. Nor is he
\nsatisfied with a simple combination; the turn of the allegory must be at once
\nethical, ecclesiastical and political in one fell complexity, his witch of
\nFaery-land represents Falsehood, the Roman Catholic Church and Mary Queen of Scots
\nin an irritating jumble. The subject of a poem of this kind has to be the
\nstruggle of the powers of good and evil, but the human figures through whom it
\nworks out to its issues, cannot be merely the good or the evil, this or that
\nvirtue or vice, but must stand for them as their expressive opportunity of
\nlife, not as their allegorical body. That is how Homer and Valmiki work out
\ntheir idea. Spenser, a great poet, is not blind to this elementary condition,
\nbut his tangled skein of allegory continually hampers the sounder conception
\nand the interpretative narration works itself through the maze of its
\ndistractions which we are obliged to accept, not for their own interest or
\nliving force and appeal, but for the beauty of the poetic expression and
\ndescription to which they give occasion. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Besides this fault of the initial
\nconception, there are defects in the execution. After a time at least the
\nvirtues and vices altogether lose their way in faery-land or they become
\nmistily vague and negligible which is, but considering the idea of the poem
\nought not to be, a great relief to the reader. We are content to read the poem
\nor, still better, each canto apart as a romance and leave the meaning to take
\ncare of itself, -what was intended as a great ethical interpretative poem of
\nthe human soul, as a series of romantic descriptions and incidents. We see
\nwhere the defect is when we make a comparison with the two other greater poems
\nwhich had a similar intention. The Odyssey is a battle of human will and
\ncharacter sup [ported by divine power against evil men and wrathful gods and
\nadverse circumstance and the deaf opposition of the elements, whose scenes move
\nwith an easy inevitability between the lands of romance and the romance of
\nactual human life, losing nowhere in the wealth of incident and description
\neither the harmonizing aesthetic colour or the simple central idea. The
\nRamayana too is made up of first materials which belong to the world of faery
\nromance, but, transformed into an
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 77<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

epic
\ngreatness, they support easily a grandiose picture of the struggle of incarnate
\nGod and Titan, of a human culture expressing the highest order and range of
\nethical values with a reign of embattled anarchic force, egoistic violence and
\ndomination and lawless self-assertion. The whole is of a piece and even in its
\nenormous length and protracted detail there is a victorious simplicity,
\nlargeness and unity. The English poet loses himself in the outward, in romantic
\nincident and description pursued by his imagination for their own sake. His
\nidea is often too much and too visibly expressed, yet in the end finds no
\nsuccessful expression. Instead of relying upon the force of his deeper poetic
\nidea to sustain him, he depends on intellectual device and parades his
\nmachinery. The thread of connection is wandering and confused. He achieves a
\ndiffuse and richly confused perplexity, not a unity.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>There are the natural limitation of
\nthe Elizabethan age, and we have to note them with what may semi at first a
\ndisproportionate emphasis, because they are the key to the immediately
\nfollowing reaction of English poetry with its turn in Milton towards a severe
\nand serious intellectual effort and discipline and its fall in Dryden and Pope
\nto a manner which got away from the most prominent defects of the Elizabethan
\nmind at the price of a loss of all its great powers. English poetry before
\nMilton had not passed through any training of the poetic and artistic
\nintelligence; it had abounding energy and power, but no self-discipline of th4e
\nidea. Except in Shakespeare it fails to construct; it at once loses and finds
\nitself in a luxurious indulgence of its power, follows with a loose sweetness
\nor a vehement buoyancy all its impulses good, bad or indifferent. Still what it
\ndoes achieve, is unique and often superlative in its kind. It achieves an
\nunsurpassed splendour or imaginative vitality, vision of the life spirit, and
\nalso an unsurpassed intensity of poetical expression, life venting itself in
\nspeech, pouring its lyric emotion, its intimate and intuitive description of
\nitself in passionate detail, thinking aloud in a native utterance of poetry
\npacked with expressive image or felicitous in directness. There is no other
\npoetry which has in at all the same degree this achievement.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This poetry is then great in achievement
\nwithin the limits of its method and substance; but that substance and method <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 78<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

belong
\nto the second step of the psychological gradations by which poetry becomes a more
\nand more profound and subtle instrument of the self-expression of the spirit in
\nman. English poetry, I have remarked, followers the grades of this ascension
\nwith a singular fidelity of sequence. At first it was satisfied with only a
\nprimary superficial response to the most external appearances of life, its
\nvisible figures, incidents, primary feelings and characteristics; to mirror
\nthese things clearly, justly, with a certain harmony of selection and a just
\nsufficient transmutation in the personality and aesthetic temperament is enough
\nfor this earlier type of poetry, all the more easily satisfied because
\neverything is fresh, interesting, stimulating, and the liveliness of the poetic
\nimpression replaces the necessity of subtlety or depth. Great poetry can be
\nwritten in early times with this as its substantial method, but not afterwards
\nwhen the race mind has begun to make an intenser and more inward response to
\nlife. It then becomes the resort of a secondary inspiration which is unable to
\nrise to the full heights of poetic possibility; or else, this external method
\nstill persists as part of the outward manner of more subjective creation, but
\nwith a demand for more heightened effects and a more penetrating expression. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This is what has happened in the
\nElizabethan age. The external tendency still persists, but it is no longer
\nsufficient. Where it is most preserved, it still demands a more vehement
\nresponse, strong colours, violent passions, exaggerated figures, out-of-the-way
\nor crowding events. Life is still the Muse of its poetry, but it is a Life
\nwhich demands to feel itself more and is knocking at the gates of the deeper
\nsubjective being. And in all the best work of the time it has already got
\nthere, not very deep, but still enough to be initially subjective. Whatever
\nShakespeare may suggest, -a poet\u2019s critical theories are not always a just clue
\nto his inspiration, -it is not the holding up of a mirror to life and Nature,
\nbut a moved and excited reception and evocation. Life throws its impressions,
\nbut what seizes upon them is a greater and deeper life-power inn the poet which
\nis not satisfied with mirroring or just beautifully responding, but begins to
\nthrow up at once around them its own rich matter of being and so creates
\nsomething new, more personal, intimate, fuller of an inner vision, <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 79<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

emotion,
\npassion itself-expression. This is the source of the new intensity; it is this
\nimpulse towards an utterance of the creative life-power within which drives
\ntowards the dramatic form and acts with such unexampled power in Shakespeare;
\nat another extremity of the Elizabethan mind, in Spenser, it gets farther away
\nfrom the actuality of life and takes its impressions as hints only for a purely
\nimaginative creation which has an aim at things symbolic, otherwise revelatory,
\ndeeper down in the soul itself, and shadows them out through the magic of
\nromance if it cannot yet intimately seize and express them. Still\u00a0 <\/span>even there the method of the utterance, if
\nnot altogether its aim, is the voice of Life lifting itself out into waves of
\nword and colour and image and sheer beauty of sound. Imagination, thought,
\nvision work with the emotional life-mind as their instrument or rather in it as
\na medium, accepted as the form and force of their being.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Great poetry is the result, but
\nthere are other powers of the human mind which have not yet been mastered, and
\nto get at these is the next immediate step of English poetry. The way it
\nfollows is to bring forward the intellect as its chief instrument, the
\nthought-mind no longer carried along in the wave of life, but detaching itself
\nfrom it to observe and reflect upon it. We have at first an intermediate
\nmanner, that of Milton\u2019s early work and of the Carolean poets, in which the
\nElizabethan impulse prolongs itself but is fading away under the stress of an
\nincreasing intellectuality. This rises on one side into the ripened classical
\nperfection of Milton, falls away on the other through Waller into the reaction
\nin Dryden and Pope. <\/p>\n

\nPage – 80<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XI          The Course of English Poetry \u2013 3    \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THE Elizabethan drama is an expression of the stir of the life-spirit; at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","wpcat-29-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}