{"id":1719,"date":"2013-07-13T01:36:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T08:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2013-11-28T15:12:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-28T23:12:49","slug":"09-the-course-of-english-poetry-1-vol-26-the-future-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/26-the-future-poetry\/09-the-course-of-english-poetry-1-vol-26-the-future-poetry","title":{"rendered":"-09_The Course of English Poetry – 1.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter IX <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t The Course of English Poetry \u00ad 1<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t Chaucer and the Poetry of External Life<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tT<\/font>HE SPIRIT<\/b> and temper that have stood behind the creative force and come to the front in a literature are the
\none essential thing that we must discern, for it is these that predestine the course the poetry of a people will take and
\nthe turn it gives to its forms. For if the field which poetry covers is common ground and its large general lines the same
\neverywhere, yet each nation has its own characteristic spirit and creative quality which determine the province in which it will
\nbest succeed, the turn or angle of its vision and the shape of its work. The genius of English poetry was evidently predestined
\nby the complexity of its spirit and its union of opposite powers to an adventurous consecutive seeking over the whole field, and
\nthis is in fact the first character of it that strikes the eye, a series of bold and powerful creative adventures, each quite different
\nin spirit from its predecessor. But in its first natural potentiality certain pronounced limitations point to a facile and vigorous
\nsuccess in a forcefully accurate or imaginative presentation of life and a more difficult and incomplete success in the intellectual
\nor spiritual interpretation of life; most difficult for it would be a direct presentation of the things beyond, a concrete image
\nof mystic realities, a poetic approach to the higher truths of the spirit. Yet on the other hand if this difficulty could once
\nbe overcome, then because of the profounder intensity of the power of poetical speech which this literature has developed,
\nthe very highest and most penetrating expression of these profoundest things would be possible. A nearer significant imaging
\nof them would be close to the hand here than could easily be achieved without much new fashioning of language in the Latin
\ntongues whose speech has been cast in the mould of a clear   <\/p>\n

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\n

\nor high intellectuality rather than into the native utterance of imaginative
\nvision adventuring beyond the normal bounds of a high poetic intelligence. We
\nsee in modern French creation a constant struggle with this limitation: even we
\nfind a poet like  Mallarme driven to break the mould of French speech in his
\ndesperate effort to force it to utter what is to its natural clear lucidity almost unutterable. No such difficulty presents itself in
\nEnglish poetry; the depths, the vistas of suggestion, the power to open the doors of the infinite are already there, ready to hand
\nfor the mind rightly gifted to evoke them, waiting and almost asking to be used for the highest purposes. Much less naturally
\nfitted for fine prose utterance, this language has developed all the close lights and shades, the heights and depths, the recesses
\nof fathomless sense needed by the poet. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt has to be seen how this has come about; for it has not
\nbeen accomplished at all easily, but only by much seeking and effort. We observe first that English poetry has covered the rising
\nfield that lies before the genius of poetry by strictly successive steps, and these steps have followed the natural ascending order
\nof our developing perceptions as the human consciousness rises from the first physical view of things through the more inward
\nlife-vision, through the constructing and pondering intellect and last through a vivid or a brooding intuition to the gateways of
\nthe spirit. The English creative genius began by a quite external, a clear and superficial substance and utterance. It proceeded
\nto a deeper vital poetry, a poetry of the power and beauty and wonder and spontaneous thought, the joy and passion and pain,
\nthe colour and music of Life, in which the external presentation of life and things was taken up, but heightened, exceeded and
\ngiven its full dynamic and imaginative content. From that it turned to an attempt at mastering the secret of the Latins, the
\nsecret of a clear, measured and intellectual dealing with life, things and ideas. Then came an attempt, a brilliant and beautiful
\nattempt to get through Nature and thought and the veiled mind in life and Nature and its profounder aesthetic suggestions to
\nsome large and deep spiritual truth behind these things. This attempt did not come to perfect fruition; it stopped short partly<\/p>\n

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\n

\nbecause there had not been the right intellectual preparation or a sufficient basis of spiritual knowledge and experience; only so
\nmuch could be given as the solitary individual intuition of the poet could attain by a difficult groping or a sudden sovereign
\neffort. But partly also it failed because after the lapse into an age of reason the spontaneous or the intense language of spiritual
\npoetry could not easily be found or, if found at times, could not be securely kept. So we get a deviation into a second age
\nof intellectualism, an aesthetic or reflective poetry with a much wider range, but much less profound in its roots, much less
\nhigh in its growth, the creation of a more informed, but less inspired intelligence. And partly out of this increasing wideness
\nof the observing intelligence, partly by a dissatisfaction and recoil from these limitations has come the trend of a recent and
\ncontemporary poetry which seems at last to be approaching on some of its lines and in spite of many mistakes and divagations
\nthe secret of the utterance of profounder truth and the right magic of a speech and rhythm which will be the apt body and
\nmotion of its spirit. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first definite starting-point of this long movement is the
\npoetry of Chaucer. Then first the rough poverty of the Anglo-Saxon mind succeeded in assimilating the French influence and
\nrefined and clarified by it its own rude speech and crude aesthetic sense. It is characteristic of the difficulty of the movement that
\nas in its beginning, so at each important turn, or at least on the three first occasions of a new orientation, it has had thus to
\ngo to school, to make almost a fresh start under the influences of a foreign culture and foreign poetic forms and motives. It
\nhas needed each time in spite of so much poetic originality and energy and genius a strong light of suggestion from outside to
\nset it upon its way. All modern literatures have had indeed at one time or another to open out to this kind of external help
\nand stimulus; but, once formed and in possession of themselves, they adopt these impresses more or less lightly and only as a
\nsecondary assistance. But here we have a remodelling of the whole plan under foreign teaching. Chaucer gives English poetry
\na first shape by the help of French romance models and the work   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 6<\/font>5<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof Italian masters; the Elizabethans start anew in dependence on Renaissance influences from France and Italy and a side wind
\nfrom Spain; Milton goes direct to classical models; the Restoration and the eighteenth century take pliantly the pseudo-classical
\nform from the contemporary French poets and critics. Still this dependence is only in externals; in the essential things of poetry
\nsome native character prevails, a new turn is rapidly given, an original power and method emerges; the dynamic vitality of the
\nrace was too great not to arrive at an immediate transmutation of the invading force. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe first early motive and style of this poetry as it emerges in Chaucer strikes at once an English note. The motive is a
\ndirect and concrete poetic observation of ordinary human life and character. There is no preoccupying idea, no ulterior design;
\nlife, the external figure and surface of things is reflected as near as possible to its native form in the individual mind and temperament of the poet. Chaucer has his eye fixed on the object, and that object is the visible action of life as it passes before
\nhim throwing its figures on his mind and stirring it to a kindly satisfaction in the movement and its interest, a blithe sense of
\nhumour or a light and easy pathos. He does not seek to add anything to it or to see anything below it or behind its outsides.
\nHe is not concerned to look at all into the souls or deeply into the minds of the men and women whose appearance, action and
\neasily apparent traits of character he describes with so apt and observant a fidelity. There is no call on the poet yet to ask himself
\nwhat is the meaning of all this movement of life or the power in it or draw any large poetic idea from its vivid scheme and
\nstructure. He is not moved to interpret life; a clear and happy presentation is his business. It is there simply in the sunlight with
\nits familiar lines and normal colours, sufficiently interesting in itself, by its external action, and he has to record it, to give it
\na shape in lucid poetic speech and rhythm; for to turn it into stuff of poetry that and the sunlight of his own happy poetic
\ntemperament in which he bathes it is all he needs. The form he gives to it is within its limits and for its work admirably apt,
\nsufficient and satisfying, \u2014 altogether and excellently satisfying<\/p>\n

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\n

\nif we ask from it nothing more than it has to offer. Chaucer had captured the secret of ease, grace and lucidity from French
\nromance poetry and had learned from the great Italians more force and compactness of expression than French verse had yet
\nattained, a force diluted and a compactness lightened for his purpose. But neither his poetic speech nor his rhythm has anything of the plastic greatness and high beauty of the Italians. It is an easy, limpid and flowing movement, a well-spring of natural
\nEnglish utterance without depths in it, but limpid and clear and pure. It is a form just fitted for the clear and pleasing poetic
\npresentation of external life as if in an unsoiled mirror. At times it rises into an apt and pointed expression, but for the most
\npart is satisfied with a first primitive power of poetic speech; a subdued and well-tempered even adequacy is its constant gift.
\nOnly once or twice does Chaucer, as if by accident, strike out a really memorable line of poetry; yet Dante and Petrarch were
\namong his masters. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tNo other great poetical literature has had quite such a
\nbeginning. Others also started with a poetry of external life, Greek with the poetry of Homer, Latin with the historical epic
\nof Ennius, French with the feudal romances of the Charlemagne cycle and the Arthurian cycle. But in none of these was the
\nartistic aim simply the observant accurate presentation of Greek or Roman or feudal life. Homer gives us the life of man always
\nat a high intensity of impulse and action and without subjecting it to any other change he casts it in lines of beauty and in divine
\nproportions; he deals with it as Phidias dealt with the human form when he wished to create a god in marble. When we read
\nthe Iliad and the Odyssey, we are not really upon this earth, but on the earth lifted into some plane of a greater dynamis of life,
\nand so long as we remain there we have a greater vision in a more lustrous air and we feel ourselves raised to a semi-divine
\nstature. Ennius’ object was to cast into poetical utterance the masculine and imperial spirit of Rome. So the spirit of catholic
\nand feudal Europe transmutes life in the French romances and gives in its own way an ideal presentation of it which only
\nmisses greatness by the inadequacy of its speech and rhythmic    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>67<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nmovement and the diffuse prolixity of its form. Chaucer’s poetic method has no such great conscious idea or natural uplifting
\nmotive or spirit. Whether the colour he gives happens to be realistic or romantic, it falls within the same formula. It is the
\nclear and vivid reflection of external life, with sometimes just a first tinge of romantic illumination, in an observing mind that
\nmakes itself a shining poetic mirror.<\/p>\n

\nThe spirit of English poetry thus struck its first strong note,
\na characteristic English note, got as far as the Anglo-Saxon mind refined by French and Italian influence could go in its
\nown proper way and unchanged nature, and then came suddenly to a pause. Many outward reasons might be given for
\nthat abrupt cessation, but none sufficient; for the cause lay deeper in the inner destiny of this spirit. The real cause was
\nthat to have developed upon this line would have been to wander up and down in a cul-de-sac; it would have been to anticipate in a way in poetry the self-imprisonment of Dutch art in a strong externalism, of a fairer kind indeed, but still
\ntoo physical and outward in its motive. English poetry had greater things to do and it waited for some new light and
\nmore powerful impulse to come. Still this external motive and method are native to the English mind and with many modifications have put their strong impress upon the literature. It is the ostensible method of English fiction from Richardson to Dickens; it got into the Elizabethan drama and prevented it, except in Shakespeare, from equalling the nobler
\nwork of other great periods of dramatic poetry. It throws its limiting shade over English narrative poetry, which after its
\nfresh start in the symbolism of the Faerie Queene <\/i>and the vital intensity of Marlowe ought either to have got clear away
\nfrom this first motive or at least to have transmuted it by the infusion of much higher artistic motives. To give only one
\ninstance in many, it got sadly in the way of Tennyson, who yet had no real turn for the reproduction of life, and prevented him from working out the fine subjective and mystic vein which his first natural intuitions had discovered in such
\nwork as the Lady of Shalott <\/i>and the Morte d’Arthur<\/i>. Instead<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>68<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\t\t\tof any deepening of this new original note we have to put
\nup with the Princess <\/i>and Enoch Arden <\/i>and the picturesque triviality of the
\nIdylls of the King <\/i>which give us the impression of gentlemen and ladies of Victorian drawing-rooms masquerading as Celtic-mediaeval knights and dames. If there is
\na meaning of some kind in it all, that does not come home to us because it is lost in a falsetto mimicking of the external strains of life. Certainly, it is useless to quarrel with national tendencies and characteristics which must show themselves in poetry as elsewhere; but English poetry had opened the gates of other powers and if it could always have lifted
\nup the forms of external life by these powers, the substance of its work might then have meant much more to the world
\nand the strength of its vision of things might constantly have equalled the power and beauty of its utterance. As it is, even
\npoets of great power have been constantly drawn away by this tendency from the fulfilment of their more characteristic potentialities or misled into throwing them into inapt forms, and to this day there continues this confusion and waste of poetic
\nvirtue. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe new light and impulse that set free the silence of the
\npoetic spirit in England for its first abundant and sovereign utterance, came from the Renaissance in Italy and Spain and
\nFrance. The Renaissance meant many things and it meant too different things in different countries, but one thing above all
\neverywhere, the discovery of beauty and joy in every energy of life. The Middle Ages had lived strongly and with a sort of deep
\nand sombre force, but, as it were, always under the shadow of death and under the burden of an obligation to aspire through
\nsuffering to a beyond; their life is bordered on one side by the cross and on the other by the sword. The Renaissance brings
\nin the sense of a liberation from the burden and the obligation; it looks at life and loves it in excess; it is carried away by the
\nbeauty of the body and the senses and the intellect, the beauty of sensation and action and speech and thought,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 but of thought
\nhardly at all for its own sake, but thought as a power of life. It is Hellenism returning with its strong sense of humanity and
\n    <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>69<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nthings human, nihil humani alienum<\/i>,1<\/font><\/sup> but at first a barbarised Hellenism, unbridled and extravagant, riotous in its vitalistic
\nenergy, too much overjoyed for restraint and measure. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tElizabethan poetry is an expression of this energy, passion
\nand wonder of life, and it is much more powerful, disorderly and unrestrained than the corresponding poetry in other countries;
\nfor it has neither a past traditional culture nor an innate taste to restrain its extravagances. It springs up in a chaos of power
\nand of beauty in which forms emerge and shape themselves by a stress within it for which there is no clear guiding knowledge
\nexcept such as the instinctive genius of the age and the individual can give. It is constantly shot through with brilliant threads of
\nintellectual energy, but is not at all intellectual in its innate spirit and dominant character. It is too vital for that, too much moved
\nand excited; for its mood is passionate, sensuous, loose of rein; its speech sometimes liquid with sweetness, sometimes vehement
\nand inordinate in pitch, enamoured of the variety of its own notes, revelling in image and phrase, a tissue of sweet or violent
\ncolours, of many-hued fire, of threads of golden and silver light. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIt bestowed on the nation a new English speech, rich in capacity, gifted with an extraordinary poetic intensity and wealth and copiousness, but full also of the excesses of new formation
\nand its disorder. A drama exultant in action and character and passion and incident and movement, a lyric and romantic poetry
\nof marvellous sweetness, richness and force are its strong fruits. The two sides of the national mind threw themselves out for the
\nfirst time, each with its full energy, but within the limits of a vital, sensuous and imaginative mould, fusing into each other and
\nseparating and alternating in outbursts of an unrestrained joy of self-expression, an admirable confusion of their autonomous
\nsteps, an exhilarating and stimulating licence. The beauty and colour of one was dominant in its pure poetry, the vigour of the
\nother took the lead in its drama, but both in Shakespeare were welded into a supreme phenomenon of poetic and dramatic genius. It is on the whole the greatest age of utterance, though not <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1<\/font><\/sup> Nothing human is alien to me.
\n  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>70<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nof highest spirit and aim, through which the genius of English poetry has yet travelled, unsurpassed in its spontaneous force
\nand energy, unsurpassed in its brilliance of the expressive word and the creative image.
\n   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013 <\/font>71<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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