Part 5 (2/2)
The following letter is poetry:
I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest, dearest, as if it were right rather to think of doing myself that good and relief, than of you who have to read all. But you spoil me into an excess of liberty by your tenderness. Best in the world!
Oh--you help me to live--I am better and lighter since I have drawn near to you even on this paper--already I am better and lighter. And now I am going to dream of you . . . to meet you on some mystical landing place . . . in order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh--we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched in _ourselves_ . . . in the apple of our eye . . .
in the quick of our heart . . . in _what_ you are and _where_ you are . . . my own dearest beloved! So you need not be afraid for _me_. We all look to our own, as I to _you_; the thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, and, except in the first part, none of us be moved. True it is of me--not of you perhaps, certainly you are better than I in all things.
Best in the world you are--no one is like you. Can you read what I have written? Do not love me less! Do you think that I cannot feel you love me, through all this distance? If you loved me less, I should know, without a word or sign. Because I live by your loving me! (June 24, 1846.)
It took the Greeks and Romans some time to learn that prose was the best medium for philosophy and history. Plato had the good sense to write in prose instead of following the ridiculous method of versifying of the early Greek philosophers, like Parmenides and Empedocles.
In the first century A.D. various Roman historians wrote of historical events in the form of epic poems. These are really histories with a little occasional glimmer of poetry. Thus we had Silius's _Pontica_, Valerius Flaccus's _Argonautica_, Statius's _Thebais_, and Lucan's _Pharsalia_. The last two works were especially admired in the medieval ages when rhymed or metrical historical chronicles were the fas.h.i.+on, and they were favorites of Dante. Very few people to-day read these metrical histories. English literature also is full of metrical and rhymed histories, geographies, criticisms, scientific works, essays, etc. But no one reads Warner's _Albion's England_, Drayton's _Poly Olbion_, or Daniel's _First Four Books of the Civil War_. And Darwin's versified _Botanical Garden_ has been a standing joke.
It is remarkable how past usages in literature influence us. The examples of Lucretius versifying philosophy in his _Nature of Things_, and that of Horace writing literary criticism in verse in his _Art of Poetry_, have been fruitful of mischief. Even much of the lengthy works of Sh.e.l.ley, Byron and Browning would have been better had they been written in prose, and they would have lost none of their poetic qualities. The greatness of the _Ring and the Book_, _Don Juan_ and the _Revolt of Islam_ remains when these works are translated into the prose of another language.
The French have perfected the art of poetical prose,[86:A] or prose poetry, probably more than any other nation. The reason may be that they have not been prolific of good poetry in verse, and have instead reserved their poetry for prose, a more natural medium than Alexandrine lines.
Fenelon was one of the first moderns who attacked verse. In two critical works, _Dialogues on Eloquence_ and _Letters to the French Academy_ (there is an English translation of both, out of print), he emphasized the insignificant part played by versification in poetry. He held that there was no true eloquence without a due mixture of poetry, that poetry was the very soul of eloquence. He said that there were many poets who were poetical without making verses, and he considered versification distinct from poetry. In his definition of poetry he excluded a consideration of versification. He thought the perfection of French verse impossible, that versification loses more than it gains by rhyme, and that French poets were cramped by versification. He wanted superfluous ornaments removed and the necessary parts turned into natural ornaments. Still he did not insist on a complete abandonment of rhyme, but wanted greater freedom. His biographer, St. Cyr, says that Fenelon wanted to abolish verse altogether in French poetry. Fenelon also wrote a novel in prose poetry in 1699, _Telemaque_. But prose poetry existed in France before him, in old romances like the story of _Auca.s.sin and Nicolette_ and in Bossuet's funeral orations. His example was followed by Sainte Pierre, in _Paul and Virginia_, by Prevost in _Manon Lescaut_, by Rousseau and especially by Chateaubriand in _Atala_, _The Genius of Christianity_ and _The Martyrs_. Unfortunately, Fenelon insisted in introducing the cliches of verse into prose; artificial and unnatural language hence ruined some of his work and a.s.sisted in bringing the term prose poetry into contempt.
The French have always regarded the poet in a broader sense than have the English. The article on poetry in the French Encyclopedia deals with prose poems as well as with verse poems. Victor Hugo in his _Shakespeare_, when he calls the lists of poets, mentions prose writers like Diderot, Rousseau, Balzac, Chateaubriand, George Sand, Le Sage and Cervantes. He who was himself a great poet knew that poetry did not depend on metre.
Eugene Veron, the great French critic, author of a valuable work on _aesthetics_ (fortunately translated into English), also takes a broad conception of the term poetry. He says that it would be absurd to deny Moliere's _L'Avare_ is poetry because it is in prose, for poetical, creative imagination and personal emotions are at work here. He states that there was poetry in the story of Don Juan before Corneille put it in verse. Versification, he urges, does not const.i.tute poetry. He sees that verse would not have improved such prose poems as _Paul and Virginia_, _La Mare au Diable_, or _L'Oiseau_ (Michelet), and he places in the front rank of poetry pa.s.sages from Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet (no doubt referring to some of the famous funeral orations) and Mirabeau. He also says it is impossible to refuse to see poetic character in the novel, for this deals with the creation of character and the portrayal of pa.s.sions.
I do not wish to go into the prose poetry written by other nations, for every literature is full of it.
There is a growing tendency in England to encourage prose poetry.[88:A]
De Quincey having made a special plea for impa.s.sioned prose is looked upon as the father of it, though there was prose poetry in English literature from the earliest times; Malory, Sidney, Sir Thomas Browne, Raleigh, Drummond, Milton, Bunyan, Taylor and Fuller were great prose poets.
John Stuart Mill and Lord Beaconsfield both recognized the utterly negligible role of metre in determining the nature of poetry. In an early essay, originally published before he was thirty and collected with another under the t.i.tle _Poetry and Its Varieties_, Mill gives us his definition of poetry. Guided by a statement of the author of the _Corn Law Rhymes_, Ebenezer Elliot, that poetry is impa.s.sioned truth, and by another definition from Blackwood's, that poetry is ”man's thought tinged by his feelings,” he says, ”Every truth which a human being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry when shown through any impa.s.sioned medium, when invested with the coloring of joy, or grief, or pity, or affection, or admiration, or reverence, or awe, or even hatred, or terror: and, unless so colored, nothing, be it as interesting as it may, is poetry.” There is nothing said in this definition about rhythm or metre, and indeed Mill regarded as the vulgarest of all any definition of poetry which confounds it with metrical composition.
An idea emotionally treated becomes poetry whether in prose or verse, whether rhythmical or not. Mill understood that, yet he erred when he a.s.signed a minor role to the emotions excited by the incidents in prose fiction, though it is true that the emotions of excitement wakened by the mere novel of adventure are indicative of a lower order of poetry.
It is to be regretted, however, that about five years later he somewhat modified his main views.
Prose poetry was consciously written by Lord Beaconsfield, who tells us in the early preface to his novel, _Alroy_, that he was trying to write rhythmical prose poetry in that novel. He did not always succeed, but throughout all his novels are found many excellent prose poems. He was writing prose poetry in the early eighteen thirties before Baudelaire, and in some of his tales, like _Pompanilla_, we have prose poems. He often became bombastic, but he was a poet, nevertheless.
Later English critics have returned to the subject of prose poetry.
In his _Aspects of Poetry_ Professor John C. Shairp says that he grants ”that the old limits between prose and poetry tend to disappear.” He concludes his book with two chapters on prose poets, on Carlyle and Newman. And Courthope, wors.h.i.+pper of metre that he is, concludes his _History of English Poetry_ with a chapter on the poetry in the Waverly Novels. We also recall that Bagehot could see little difference between Tennyson's novels in verse and George Eliot's novels in prose.
A great critic like Pater maintained the rights of the poet in prose. In his essay on Style he said ”Prose will exert in due measure all the varied charms of poetry down to the rhythm which, as in Cicero, Michelet, or Newman, gives its musical value to every syllable.”
The first lengthy and systematic plea for prose poetry I know of in English, outside of Disraeli's and De Quincey's modest apologies for writing in this manner, was made by David Ma.s.son in an essay on _Prose and Verse: De Quincey_, published as a review of De Quincey in 1854. De Quincey's preface, pleading for impa.s.sioned prose, suggested Ma.s.son's essay. Ma.s.son had, however, dwelt on the poetic side of prose the year before in an article on Dallas's _Poetics_, called _Theories of Poetry_.
Both of Ma.s.son's essays are to be found in his _Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats and Other Essays_. Ma.s.son very ingeniously asks why we are not allowed to write prose in the manner that Milton writes in verse, or in the manner of aeschylus in prose translation. He concludes that poetry and prose are not two entirely separate spheres, but intersecting and penetrating. To-day we go even farther than Ma.s.son and urge that prose, except in short lyrics when verse may be used, should be the sole language of pa.s.sion and the imagination. He vindicates De Quincey's right to use impa.s.sioned prose; he quotes as an example of prose poetry a beautiful pa.s.sage from the conclusion of Milton's pamphlet, _Causes That Have Hindered the Reformation in England_, and mentions especially Jean Paul Richter, the prose poet who was responsible for the prose poetry of two disciples, De Quincey and Carlyle. Richter's _Christ and the Universe_ is highly regarded by him as prose poetry.
Ma.s.son's prediction that the time was coming when the best prose should more resemble verse than it had done in the past, and that the best verse should not disdain a certain resemblance to prose, is being fulfilled. Remember Ma.s.son wrote before the _Leaves of Gra.s.s_ appeared, and before the vogue of free verse.
Yet his viewpoint was severely criticized by a scholar like John Earle, whose _English Prose_ contains an attack on prose poetry. Earle says that prose poetry is found chiefly in ages of literary decadence like the Latin Silver Age in writers from Tacitus to Boethius. On the contrary, it is found as well in the golden ages of literature, as, for example, in Sidney's _Arcadia_, which he himself quotes from, in Plato, in Pascal, in Dante's prose. It is strange that this view of Earle's should still largely prevail. Poetry and prose are still regarded by academic scholars like Earle, Saintsbury, Courthope, Bosanquet Watts-Dunton and Gummere as two distinct branches of literature. Earle is right only when he objects to the cliches of verse in prose, but to-day we object to all cliches.
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