{"id":1296,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1296"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:55","slug":"09-the-character-of-english-poetry-2-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\/09-the-character-of-english-poetry-2-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Character of English Poetry \u00e2\u20ac\u201c 2.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

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

\n <\/font>      The Character of English
\nPoetry \u2013 2<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n            
\n<\/font>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font>
\n<\/span><\/b>W<\/font>HAT
\nkind or quality of poetry should we naturally expect from a national mind so
\nconstituted? The Anglo-Saxon strain is dominant and in that circumstance there
\nlay just a hazardous possibility that there might have been no poetical
\nliterature at all. The Teutonic nations have in this field been conspicuous by
\ntheir silence or the rarity of their speech. After the old rude epics, saga or Nibelungenlied, we have to wait till quite recent times for poetic utterance,
\nnor, when it came, was it rich or abundant. In Germany a brief period of strong
\nproductive culture in which the great names Goethe and Heine rise out of a mass
\nof more or less vigorous verse talent rather than poetical genius of Ibsen.
\nHolland, another Teutonic country which developed an art of a considerable but
\na wholly objective power, is mute in poetry. It would almost seem that there is
\nstill something too thick and heavy in the strength and depth of the Teutonic
\ncomposition fore the ethereal light and fire of the poetic word to make its way
\nfreely through the intellectual and vital envelope. What has saved the English
\nmind from a like taciturnity? Certainly, it must have been the mixture off
\nracial elements, sublimating the material temperament, with the submerged
\nCeltic genius mind in as a decisive force to liberate and uplift the poetic
\nspirit. And as a necessary aid we have the unique historical accident of the
\nreshaping of a Teutonic tongue by French and Latinistic influences which gave
\nit clearer and more flowing forms and turned it into a fine though difficult
\nlinguistic material sufficiently malleable, sufficiently plastic for Poetry to
\nproduce her larger and finer effects, sufficiently difficult to compel her to
\nput forth her greatest energies. A stuff of speech which, without being harsh
\nand inapt, does not tempt by too great a facility, but offers a certain
\nresistance in the material, increases\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 49<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the
\nstrength of the artist by the measure of the difficulty conquered and can be
\nthrown into shapes at once of beauty and of concentrated power. That is
\neminently the character of the English language. <\/p>\n

At any rate we have this long continuity of
\npoetic production. And once supposing a predominantly Anglo-Saxon national mind
\nto express itself in poetry, we should, ignoring for a moment the Celtic
\nemergence, expect the groundwork to be a strong objective poetry, a powerful
\npresentation of the forms of external life, action and character in action, the
\npleasant or the melancholy outsides of Nature, the robust play of the will and
\nthe passions, a vigorous vital and physical verse. Even we might look for a
\ngood deal of deviation into subjects and motives for which prose will always be
\nthe more adequate and characteristic instrument, nor should we be surprised at
\na self-styled Augustan age which would make them the greater part of its realm
\nand indulge with a self-satisfied contentment in a \u201ccriticism\u201d of external
\nlife, the poetry of political and ecclesiastical controversy, didactic verse,
\nsatire. There would be considerable power of narrative and a great energy in
\nthe drama of character and incident, but a profounder use of the narrative and
\ndramatic forms would not be looked for; at most we might have in the end the
\ndramatic analysis of character. The romantic element would be of the external
\nTeutonic kind sensational and outward, appealing to the life and the senses,
\nnot the delicate and beautiful, the imaginative and spiritual Celtic
\nromanticism. We should have perhaps much poetical thinking or even poetical
\nphilosophy of a rather obvious kind, sedate, or vigorous, prompt and direct, or
\nrobustly powerful, but not the finer and subtler poetical thought which comes
\neasily to the clear Latin intellect. Form too of a kind we might hope for,
\nthough we could not be quite sure of it, at best bright and plain or strongly
\nbalanced, not either those greater forms in which a high and deep creative
\nthought presides or the more exquisite forms which a delicate sense of beauty
\nor a subtle poetic intuition creates. Both the greater and more profound and
\nthe subtler intensities of style and rhythm would be absent; but there would be
\nboldly forcible or a well-beaten energy or speech and much of the more metallic
\nvigours of verse.
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage – 50<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

This
\nside of the national mind would prepare us for English poetry As it was until
\nChaucer and beyond, the ground-type of the Elizabethan drama, the work of
\nDryden and Pope, the whole mass of eighteenth-century verse, Cowper, Scott,
\nWordsworth in his more outward moments, Byron without his Titanism and unrest,
\nthe poetry of Browning. For these we need not go outside the Anglo-Saxon
\ntemperament. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>That also would give, but subject to
\na potent alchemy of transformation the basic form and substance of most English
\npoetry.\u00a0 <\/span>That alchemy we can fairly
\nattribute to the submerged Celtic element which emerges, as time goes on, in
\nbright upstreamings and sometimes in exceptional outbursts of power. It comes
\nup in a blaze of colour, light, emotion and imaginative magic; in a hungering
\nfor beauty in its more subtle and delicately sensuous forms, for the ideal
\nwhich escapes definition and yet has to be seized in forms; in a subtler
\nromance; in a lyrical intoxication. It casts into the mould a higher urge of
\nthought, not the fine, calm and measured poetical thinking of the Greeks and
\nthe Latin races which deals sovereignly with life within the limits of the
\nintellect and the inspired reason, but an excitement of though seeking for
\nsomething beyond itself and behind life through the intensities of poetical
\nsight. It brings in a look upon Nature which pierces beyond her outsides and
\nher external spirit and lays its touch on the mysteries of her inner life and
\nsometimes on that in her which is most intimately spiritual. It awakens rare
\noutbreaks of mysticism, a vein of subtler sentiment, a more poignant pathos; it
\nrefines passion from a violence of the vital being into an intensity of the
\nsoul, modifies vital sensuousness into a thing of imaginative beauty by a
\nwarmer aesthetic perception. It carries with it a seeking for exquisite lyrical
\nform, touches narrative poetry to finer issues, throws its romantic beauty and
\nforce and fire and its greater depth of passion across the drama and makes it
\nsomething more that a tumultuous external action and heavily powerful
\ncharacter-drawing. At one period it strives to rise beyond the English mould,
\nseems about to disengage itself and reveal through poetry the Spirit in things.
\nIn language and music it is always a quickening and refining force; where it
\ncan do nothing more, it breathes a more intimate energy <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 51<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

and,
\nwhere it gets its freer movement creates that intensity of style and rhythm,
\nthat force of imaginative vision and that peculiar beauty of turn which are the
\nhighest qualities of English poetry.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The various commingling or
\nseparating of these two elements marks the whole later course of the literature
\nand they present as their effect a side of failure and defect and a side of
\nachievement. There are evidently two opposite powers at work in the same field,
\noften compelled to labour in the same mind at a common production, and when two
\nsuch opposites can coalesce seize each other\u2019s deficiencies, light each other
\nup with a new light and bring in a fresh revelation which neither by itself
\ncould have accomplished. The greatest things in English poetry have come where
\nthis fusion was effected in the creative mind and soul of the poet. But that could
\nnot always be done and there arises an uncertainty of motive, an unsureness of
\ntouch, an oscillation. It does not prevent great triumphs of poetic power, but
\ndoes prevent a high equality and sustained perfection of self-expression and
\ncertainty necessarily on this scale or with so frequent and extensive a falling
\nbelow what should be the normal level.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>To the same uncertainty may be
\nattributed the abrupt starts and turns of the course of English poetry, its
\nwant of conscious continuity,-for there is a secret and inevitable continuity
\nwhich we shall have to disengage. It takes a very different course from the
\nexternal life of the nation which has always been faithful to its inner motive
\nand spirit and escaped from the shattering and suddenly creative changes that
\nhave at once afflicted and quickened the life of other peoples. The revolutions
\nof the spirit of English poetry are of an astonishing decisiveness and
\nabruptness. We can mark off first the early English poetry which found its
\nsolitary greater expression in Chaucer; indeed it marks itself off by an
\nabsolute exhaustion and cessation. The magnificent Elizabethan outburst has
\nanother motive, spirit, manner of expression, which seems to have nothing to do
\nwith the past; it is self-born under the impulse of a new age and environment.
\nAs this dies <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 52<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

away,
\nwe have the lonely figure of Milton with his strenuous effort at an
\nintellectual poetry cast in the type of the ancients. The age which succeeds is
\nthat of a trivial intellectuality which does not follow the lead of Milton and
\nis the exact contrary of the Elizabethan form and spirit, the thin and arid
\nreign of Pope and Dryden. Another violent breaking away, a new outburst of
\nwonderful freshness gives us the poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Blake
\nwith another spirit and another language of the spirit. The Victorian period
\ndid not deny their influences; it felt them in the form of its work, and we
\nmight have expected it to have gone forward with what had been only a great
\nbeginning that did not arrive at its full fruition. But it did nothing of the
\nkind; it deviated into a new way which has nothing to do with the finer spirit
\nof the preceding poets and fell off into an intellectual, artistic, carefully
\nwrought, but largely external poetry. And now we have this age which is still
\ntrying to find itself, but in its most characteristic tendencies seems to be a
\nrejection of the Victorian forms and motives. These reversals and revolutions
\nof the spirit are not in themselves a defect or a disability; they simply mean
\nthat English poetical literature has been a series of bold experiments less
\nshackled by the past than in countries which have a stronger sense of cultural
\ntradition. Revolutions are distracting things, but they are often good for the
\nhuman soul; for they bring a rapid opening of new horizons. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Here comes in the side of success
\nand achievement. By the natural law of compensation it is gained by a force
\nwhich answers to the defects and limitations; it has those for its price. For
\nnowhere else has individual genius found so free a field, been able to work so
\ndirectly out of itself and follow so boldly its own line of poetic adventure.
\nForm is a great power, but sureness of form is not everything. A strong
\ntradition of form gives a sure ground upon which genius can work in safety and
\nbe protected from its own wanderings; but it limits and stands in the way of
\ndaring individual; adventure. The spirit of adventure, if its path is strewn
\nwith accidents, stumblings or fatal casualties, brings, when it does succeed,
\nnew revelations which are worth all the price paid for them. English poetry is
\nfull of such new revelations. Its richness, its constant freshness, its lavish
\nexpenditure <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 53<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\ngenius exulting in freedom, delivered from all meticulous caution, its fire and
\nforce of imaginations, its lambent energy of poetic speech, its constant
\nself-liberation into intensest beauty of self-expression are the rewards of its
\ncourage and its liberty. These things are of the greatest value in poetry. They
\nlead besides to possibilities which are of the highest importance to the poetry
\nof the future. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>We may briefly anticipate and
\nindicate in what manner. We have to accept one constant tendency of the spirit
\nof English poetry, which loves to dwell with all its weight upon the
\npresentation of life and action, of feeling and passion, to give that its full
\nforce and to make it the basis and the source and, not only the point of
\nreference, but the utility of all else. A strong hold upon this life, the
\nearth-life, is the characteristic of the English mind, and it is natural that
\nit should take possession of its poetry. The pure Celtic genius leans towards
\nthe opposite extreme, seems to care little for the earth-life, is attracted by
\nall that is hidden and secret. The Latin mind insists on the presentation of
\nlife, but for the purposes of thought; its eye is on the universal truths ands
\nrealities of which it is the visible expression, -not the remoter, the
\nspiritual or soul truths, but those which present themselves to the clarities
\nof the intelligence. But the English mind looks at life and loves it for its
\nown sake, in all its externalities, its play of outer individualities, its
\nimmediate subjective idiosyncrasies. Even when it is strongly attracted by
\nother motives, the intellectual, the aesthetic or the spiritual, it seldom
\nfollows these with a completely disinterested fidelity, but comes back with
\nthem on the external life and tries to subject them to its mould. This turn is
\nnot universal,-Blake escapes from it, -nor the single dominant power, -Keats
\nand Shelley and Wordsworth have their hearts elsewhere; but it is a constant
\npower; it attracts even the poets who have not a real genius for it and
\nvitiates their work by the immixture of an alien motive. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>This objective and external turn
\nmight be strong enough in some other arts, -fiction, for instance, or
\nsculpture, -to create a clear national tradition and principle of form, but not
\neasily <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 54<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

in
\npoetry. For here the mere representation of life cannot be enough, however
\nvivid or subjected to the law of poetic beauty it may be. Poetry must drive at
\nleast at a presentation from within and not at simple artistic reproduction,
\nand the principle or presentation must be something more than that of the eye
\non the visible object. It is by a process from within, a passing of it through
\nsome kind of intimately subjective vision that life is turned into poetry. If
\nthis subjective medium is the inspired reason or the intuitive mind, the
\nexternal presentation of life gives place inevitably to an interpretation, a
\npresentation in which its actual lines are either neglected or subordinated in
\norder that some inner truth of it may emerge. But in English poetry the attempt
\nis to be or at least to appear true to the actual lines of life, to hold up a
\nmirror to Nature. It is the mirror then which has to do the poetizing of life;
\nthe vital, the imaginative, the emotional; temperament of the poet is the
\nreflecting medium and it has to supply unaided the creative and poetical element.
\nWe have then a faithfully unfaithful reflection which always amounts to a
\ntransformation, because the temperament of the poet lends to life and Nature
\nits own hues, its own lines, its own magnitudes. But the illusion of external
\nreality, of an \u201cimitation\u201d of Nature is created, – the illusion which has been
\nfor so long a first canon of Western artistic conceptions, -and the English
\nmind which carries this tendency to an extreme, feels then that it is building
\nupon the safe foundation of the external and the real; it is satisfied of the
\nearth even when it is singing in the heavens.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But this sole reliance on the
\ntemperament of the poet has certain strong results. It gives an immense
\nimportance to individuality, much greater than that which it must always have
\nin poetical creation: the transformation of life and Nature in the
\nindividuality becomes almost the whole secret of this poetry. Therefore English
\npoetry is much more powerfully and consciously personal and individual than
\nthat of any other language, aims much less directly at the impersonal and
\nuniversal. This individual subjective element creates enormous differences
\nbetween the work of poets of the same age; they cannot escape from the common
\ntendencies, but give to them a quite independent turn and expression,
\nsubordinate them to the assertion <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 55<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nthe individuality; in other literatures, until recently, the reverse has
\noftener happened. Besides, the higher value given to the intensity of the
\nimaginative, vial or emotional response favours and is perhaps a first cause of
\nthat greater intensity of speech and immediate vision which is the strength of
\nEnglish poetry. For since the heightening cannot come mainly from the power and
\nelevation of the medium through which life is seen, as in Greek and ancient
\nIndian poetry, it has to come almost entirely from the individual response in
\nthe poet, his force of personal utterance, his intensity of personal vision.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Three general characteristics
\nemerge. The first is constant reference and return of the higher poetical
\nmotives to the forms of external life, as if the enriching of that life were
\nits principal artistic aim. The second is a great force of subjective
\nindividuality and personal temperament as a leading power of the poetic
\ncreation. The third is a great intensity of speech and ordinarily of a certain
\nkind of direct vision. But in the world\u2019s literature generally these are the
\ntendencies that have been on the increase and two of them at least are likely
\nto be persistent. There is everywhere a considerable stressing of the
\nindividual subjective element, a drift towards making the most of the poet\u2019s
\npersonality, an aim at a more vivid response and the lending of new powers of
\ncolour and line from within to the vision of life and Nature, a search for new
\nintensities of word and rhythm which will translate into speech a deeper
\ninsight. In following out the possible lines of the future the defect of the
\nEnglish mind is its inability to follow the higher motives disinterestedly to
\ntheir deepest and largest creative results, but this is being remedied by a new
\ninfluences. The entrance of the pure Celtic temperament into English poetry
\nthrough the Irish revival is likely to do much; the contribution of the Indian
\nmind in work like Tagore\u2019s may act in the same direction.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>\u00a0<\/span>If this change is effected, the natural powers
\nof the English spirit will be of the highest value to the future poetry. For
\nthat poetry is likely to move to the impersonal and universal, not through the
\ntoning down of personality and individuality, but by their heightening to a
\npoint where they are liberated into the impersonal and universal expression.
\nSubjectivity is likely to be <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 56<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

its
\ngreater power, the growth to the universal subjective enriched by all the
\nforces of the personal soul-experience. The high intensity of speech which
\nEnglish poetry has brought to bear upon all its material, its power of giving
\nthe fullest and richest value to the word and the image, is needed for the
\nexpression of the values of the spiritual, which will be one of the aims of a
\nhigher intuitive utterance. If the pursuit of the higher godheads into their
\nown sphere will be one of its endeavours, their return upon the earth-life to
\ntransform our vision of it will be its other side. If certain initial movements
\nwe can even now see in English poetry outline themselves, this long stream of
\nstrong creation and utterance may arrive at a point where it will, discover a
\nsupreme utility for all its past powers in another more comprehensive motive
\ninto which their stands can be successfully interwoven: it may achieve clear
\nand powerful forms of a new intuitive utterance in which the Anglo-Celtic
\nspirit will find its highest self-expression. The Elizabethan poet wrote in the
\nspacious days of its first birth into greatness,<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Or who can tell for what great
\nwork in hand<\/i><\/p>\n


\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The greatness of our style is now
\nordained?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n<\/i><\/p>\n

\nWhat
\npowers it shall bring in, what spirits command?<\/i><\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/i><\/p>\n

It has since brought in many powers,
\ncommanded many spirits; but it may be that the richest powers, the highest and
\ngreatest spirit yet remain to be found and commanded.
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage – 57<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER VIII        The Character of English Poetry \u2013 2                \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 WHAT kind or quality of poetry should we naturally expect from a…<\/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-1296","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\/1296","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=1296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}