Part 1 (2/2)

My view of poetry as emotional prose literature enables me, I hope, to eliminate many of the so-called conflicts between poetry and philosophy and between poetry and morals. Philosophical and moral essays become poetry in those parts lit up by ecstasy or emotion. If philosophy deals with rare and profound truths in regard to the universe, if morals treat of the n.o.blest relations between man and man, then I know of no higher form of poetry than a philosophical truth, or a moral or social conception, when ecstatically stated; I can think of no higher literature of ecstasy than the imaginative utterance of great intellectual conceptions or impa.s.sioned expression of the love of justice. Shakespeare's line, ”We are but such stuff as dreams are made of,” is but a metaphysical theory emotionally put; Isaiah's rebuke to the corrupt rich is but a didactic saw, ecstatically delivered. Poetry finds its best material in metaphysical and ethical truths emotionally presented. Lofty ideas, however, and not commonplace deductions or conclusions are the best material for poetry.

I recognize, then, as great poetry, all writings in which metaphysical or scientific truth and the spirit of social service are ecstatically formulated in prose, though I make no terms with dry didactic works that pretend to be poetry. I see the workings of the intellect in a product of the imagination and I try to show that logic and morality have not been so hostile to the poetic faculty as they have been usually deemed.

At the same time I find that all poetry is a product or expression of the unconscious.

This is, then, not a book to teach the writing of poetry, but a study of the poetic faculty in literature, not in rhetorical terms, but by an appeal to the emotional life of the reader. It aims to point out the best examples of the literature of ecstasy (or poetry) whether in verse or prose. It shows that poetry is the very life of man's soul, that he has always loved it, that he has in lieu of gratification of a good and true poetic faculty often spent himself in cultivating subst.i.tutes for it. What a superficial a.s.sumption that because people do not like verse or read verse (especially trivial, lifeless, unhuman verse) they therefore do not care for poetry! Furthermore, I try to relate the poet's own literary revelation back to himself, just as the poet sought to reveal his soul to the reader.

FOOTNOTES:

[10:A] All prose has rhythm. I use the word ”unrhythmical” merely to designate such prose where the rhythm is not marked. There is no sharp dividing line between rhythmical and unrhythmical prose.

CHAPTER II

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ECSTASY

”The primal and danger-breeding gift of ecstasy,” says Huneker in his essay ”Anarchs and Ecstasy” in _Bedouins_, ”is bestowed upon few. Keats had it, and Sh.e.l.ley; despite his pa.s.sion, Byron missed it, as did the austere Wordsworth[18:A]--who had, perhaps, loftier compensations.

Swinburne had it from the first. Not Tennyson and Browning, only in occasional exaltation. Like the cold devils of Felicien Rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the winds of h.e.l.l booming about them, the poetry of Charles Baudelaire is ecstatic. Poe and Heine knew ecstasy. . . .

William Blake and his figures, rus.h.i.+ng down the secret pathway of the mystic, which zigzags from the Fourth Dimension to the bottomless pit of materialism, was a creator of the darker nuances of pain and ecstasy.”

Ecstasy is derived from the Greek word which means _to make stand out_; the mind makes sensible things stand out because it is concentrated on particular emotions, and on the ideas a.s.sociated with and springing from these emotions. We must not make the mistake of thinking that ecstasy has nothing to do with thought. On the contrary, it is too much occupied with thought. It in fact represents a form of monomania connected with a certain idea. It is a rapturous state in which the person is governed by preoccupation with a definite viewpoint. The poetic condition of ecstasy to which I refer is that mentioned by the poet Gray, in his famous _Elegy_, when he speaks of one of the dead who might have ”waked to ecstasy the living lyre.” He again uses the word in his _Progress of Poesie_, when he speaks of Milton, who rode ”upon the seraph wings of ecstasy.” Undoubtedly Gray understood by ecstasy the poetic emotion primarily. In fact, any emotion that grips a man strongly may be called ecstasy. Great grief or joy, pleasure or pain, pa.s.sion or tragedy, enthusiasm for an idea or a cause, are all ecstatic conditions. The pa.s.sion for social justice, an intense love for humanity, devotion to art, beauty, knowledge, the emotions of a happy or an unhappy lover, all const.i.tute important subjects in the literature of ecstasy.

But the ecstasy must be a universal and secular ecstasy. There are two kinds of ecstasies which though universal may manifest themselves in such primitive forms as to appear only to limited circles. I refer to the ecstasy of chauvinism, or fanatical, local, unjust patriotism, and to the ecstasy of the pathologically religious victim whose views border on hallucination. For example, if a man goes into extreme rhapsodies about his particular race or country, and vituperates the people of other races or countries, and justifies tyrannical measures towards them; if, furthermore, he writes under the a.s.sumption that all the intellectual and moral virtues reside in his people,--in short, if he is purely clannish one can scarcely expect his literary product to appeal to other people than his own. Again, if we hear or read the outburst of a devotee of a particular religious sect, and we find that we can agree with him in none of the views or dogmas he entertains; if, moreover, we observe there is something also anti-human in the att.i.tude that he takes towards life, we are revolted by his pa.s.sionate outpourings.

Though every nation and every religion is and should be to some extent clannish and sectarian, still no literature that is purely so can have a universal appeal. Hence, morbidly mystical poems, celebrating union with an anthropomorphic G.o.d, poems chanting the praises of conquest and imperialism, poems seething with hatred for people of other races or religions, poems poisoned by hatred for humanity, are all examples of the literature of ecstasy of a low order.

On the contrary, however, the literature of ecstasy may be both religious and patriotic, and still appeal to the world at large. I suppose the best ill.u.s.tration of such kind of literature is the psalms in the Old Testament. They strike a universal note and move Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, free thinkers alike. The ecstasy here does not depend upon the author's attachment to a dogma, but springs most frequently from a love of righteousness and humanity; hence the emotional appeal of the poet touches even those who are not deists. There are also fine touches and poignant prayers here and there that move even the non-Christian in some of the works of St. Augustine, Thomas a Kempis, Pascal and Bunyan.

We are not concerned here with the idea of ecstasy as a state that is supposed to give us glimpses of the deity, nor with any attempt to purify us by divesting our soul from the imperfect body and liberating it from the frailties of the flesh. On the contrary, ecstasy is nothing more than acc.u.mulated ordinary emotions and it speaks not only with the body, but with all the memories of the body. It makes use in its communications to us of those very physical infirmities that mystics a.s.sume it shuns, those residing in the body as a medium. Ecstasy employs the mind, and thus depends on the brain, the nerves, the physical senses, which are unconsciously active even in a trance, and speak out of the past. Ecstasy is the voice of the body.[21:A]

Generally speaking the ecstasy we mean in speaking of poetry is not the same as that known to mysticism. However, the ecstasy in both springs from the unconscious and is the fruit of an emotional soul because of inherited memories of past emotions. In the ecstasy of the mystic, which is usually what is called ”religious experience,” there is really little application of the reason. It is even often pathological and is both the product and the cause of a belief in absurd dogmas. It is often merely a sublimated pa.s.sion for morality, or the result, as Freudians have shown, of a hysterical attachment to parents, or the idealization of a father.

It is often a sublimated s.e.x love due to repression. Every one has been struck with the sensuous images in the conceptions of the mystics.

Broadly speaking, mysticism seeks a condition of being united to a personal G.o.d who is supposed to exist outside of nature; it craves to partake of His holiness, and to cultivate purity and be rid of the earthy. He who rejects belief in an anthropomorphic G.o.d or to the mystics' particular religions can have little of the mystics' feelings.

He does not enter into sympathy with their ideas, and this militates against the university of mystic poetry. The ecstasy does not ”catch.”

Most of the mystic poetry of the world, especially that centering around asceticism and dogma, has importance only for the believer in the mystic's philosophy. Very little of it has literary value, although it often is presented in an emotional and effective manner.

But there is a form of ecstasy in a species of mysticism that is universal and modern, and will appeal to all in spite of their religious beliefs. When the poet recognizing G.o.d in nature seeks to identify himself with nature by love and admiration for her, by a pa.s.sion for a life that is in accordance with her commands, his poetry embodying such ecstasy is universal and is lifted into a high plane. It becomes a sort of ecstatic statement of pantheistic philosophy that even the believer may accept. That is why the Persian poet, Jalalu 'l-Din Rumi, for example, appeals to us and why his works are of such high order.

Sufism or Persian mysticism began in asceticism and ended in pantheism.

It became a desire of a union with nature. In fact, it was an ecstatic state of love for man, nature, G.o.d. It had its roots however in physical love, and a story is told of a man who, wanting to become a Sufi, was told first to love some woman. Some critics even declare that many of the Persian love poems are really mystical poems, and though this is only partly true, it is certain that the Persian mystical poems are really love poems.

The mystic poems of the later Mohammedan Sufis are in fact anti-Mohammedan, and yet by a curious paradox they become after much controversy acceptable to the Church.

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