Volume II Part 50 (2/2)
translation; it is what I have called naked poetry;--it does not depend upon the ornaments of expression, all the decoration of rhyme, in order to produce its effect Perhaps you will say that this essence of poetry may also be found occasionally in prose That is true;--there is such a thing as poetry in prose, but it is also true that reatly intensify the char more elaborate for an exao by an Oxford student, and non everywhere I call it more elaborate, only because the workht has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the whole world dies With the dying sun
The ht of a whole life dies When love is done
FRANCIS BOURDILLON
An ancient Greeklike that; it has the absolute perfection of some of those ey--two thousand and even three thousand years old The comparison of stars to eyes is very old In every Western literature the stars have been called the eyes of the night; and still we call the sun the Eye of the Day, just as the Greeks did Innuht, they cannot be seen at all when the sun has well risen
They are not able to ht and joy in the world; and when the sun sets, everything becomes dark and colourless Then the poet says that human love is to human life what the sun is to the world It is not by reason, but by a feeling that we are made happy The mind cannot make us happy as the heart can Yet the mind, like the sky, ”has a thousand eyes”--that is to say, a thousand different capacities of knowledge and perception It does not matter When the person that we really love is dead the happiness of life ceases for us; emotionally our world becomes dark as the physical world becomes when the sun has set
Certainly the perfect verse and rhyme help the effect; but they are not at all necessary to the beauty of the thing Translate that into your own language in prose; and you will see that very little is lost; for the first two lines of the first stanza exactly balance the first two lines of the second stanza; and the second two lines of the first stanza balance the second two lines of the second stanza; therefore even in prose the couage it is rendered in
But it does not follow at all that because a short co or happens to be very cleverly constructed, you can call it a real poeood words, have a very little value They ive you a kind of pleasure, that is a sraceful object But if they do not touch the heart as well as the head, I should never call them real poetry For example, there is a French verse which has been translated into English more than a thousand tilish _Journal of Education_ this year asked for translations of it, and more than five hundred were sent in None of theh some of them were very clever
La vie est vaine: Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine, Et puis--bonjour!
La vie est breve: Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve, Et puis--bonsoir!
Life is vain: a little love, a little hate, and then--good-bye!
Life is brief: a little hope, a little dreaht!
Of course, this requires no explanation, the French work is astonishi+ngly clever, silish language so well As I have told you, at least a thousand English writers have tried to put it into English verse So you will see that it is very famous But is it poetry? I should certainly say that it is not It is not poetry, because it consists only of a few co way--in the tone of a cleverwith a serious subject They do not really touch us And they do not bear the test of translation Put into English, what becoht well exclaie” But let us take one verse of a Scotch song by Robert Burns which is known the whole world over, and which ritten by a man who alrote out of his own [heart]
”We two have paddled in the brook Fro sun till noon, But seas between us broad have roared Since old lang syne”
When I put that into English, the one, and the beauty of several dialect-words, such as ”dine” ( the dinner hour, therefore the midday), and the melody have disappeared Still the poetry ren country, after years of separation, and one reminds the other of childhood days when both played in the village brook frohted by the water! Only a little brook, one says;--but the breadth of oceans, the width of half the world, has been between us since that time Now, anybody who, as a boy, loved to play or swie with other boys, can feel what the poet means; whether he be a japanese or a Scotchman makes no difference at all That is poetry
And now, sobeen said on the subject of the emotional essence of poetry, I want to tell you that in the course of such lectures on poetry as we shall have in the course of the academic year, I shall try always to keep these facts before you and to select for our reading only those things which contain the thought of poetry that will bear the test of translation Much of our English poetry will not do this I think, for exareat mistake to set before japanese students such 18th century birth [work?] as the verse of Pope
As verse it is perhaps theat all The essence of poetry is not in Pope, nor is it to be found in e in which it was the fashi+on to keep all elish classes in England, because of what English students can take froh the mere study of form, of compact and powerful expression with very feords Here, the situation is exactly converse The value of foreign poetry to you cannot be in the direction of forn form cannot be reproduced in japanese any lish The value of foreign poetry is in whatand iinationto the beauty and the best quality of future japanese poetry There I think the worth of studybut correct verse, you reat poetry which has good for