Part 16 (1/2)
The Arabs then regarded poetry as ecstatic utterances emanating from the unconscious, embodying an idea, and produced with little ornament. This despite their belief that poetry must use the established forms of metre and figures. It is unfortunate that even to the present day these old forms are used, while Turkish literature has only very recently been emanc.i.p.ated from them. Even Arabian political articles are to-day written in rhymed prose. But as Chenery said, the history of rhymed prose is the history of Arabic literature. Rhyme is natural to the Arabic language, whereas it is really foreign to the English language.
If European civilization could free itself from the prejudices against Semitic and Asiatic culture, and if the universities, instead of studying minutely the barren medieval literature of Europe before the Renaissance, would give fuller courses in the poetry of the Arabs, Hebrews, Persians and Turks, the exchange would be salutary. The only Asiatic literature that Europe made an attempt to study was that of the Hindus, and, as has been suspected by many, this may have been done chiefly out of Aryan vanity, to show that the earliest culture was not Semitic but Aryan, and thus related to European culture. But the fact remains that the poetry of these four nations mentioned is far superior to that of medieval Europe. The two nations who were not Semitic, the Persians and the Ottoman Turks, are almost wholly imbued with the Semitic spirit. Persian poetry grew out of Arabic poetry, just as Ottoman poetry developed from Persian poetry. There is nothing of the Tartar spirit at all in Ottoman poetry, as Gibb has pointed out.
That poetry is subjective, lyric, ecstatic, is best seen in Oriental poetry. It will repay the lover of literature to read such works as Browne's _Literary History of Persia_, Gibb's _History of Ottoman Poetry_, and Nicholson's _Literary History of the Arabs_. As for Post-biblical poetry of the Hebrews, so rich in patriotic and moral fervor, and in hymns and elegies, there are articles in the _Jewish Encyclopedia_, chapters in Graetz's _History of the Jews_ and works on various phases of it by numerous writers.
To the Oriental, poetry is ecstasy first and last, and this is all the more remarkable since their poetry is so much more ornate, artificial, figurative, and patterned than European poetry. It is sensuous, pa.s.sionate but not ”simple.” Its chief inferiority to European poetry, however, springs from its lack in intellectual profundity, and its severance (except in the Prophets of the Bible) from problems of social justice.
FOOTNOTES:
[203:A] There is a French translation of the _Prolegomena_ by Mac Guckin de Slane.
[204:A] Translated by Prof. Browne in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1899.
[214:A] See W. H. Schofield's _English Literature from the Roman Conquest to Chaucer_, pp. 67-71.
[218:A] The best account and translations of Abu 'l Ala are in Nicholson's _Studies in Islamic Poetry_, recently published.
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION
I have not tried to present a theory of poetry, so much as to point out certain features of a particular kind of writing which I have called the literature of ecstasy. It has developed that I really used the word ecstasy in the same sense that the other critics have employed the terms unconscious, imagination, poetry. I think I have shown that the literature of ecstasy even when in prose is synonymous with poetry as understood by Shakespeare when he used ”frenzy” and ”things unknown” in reference to the poet. I have also, I hope, pointed out that an ecstatic presentation of intellectual and moral ideas results often in a great poetic product.
I do not purpose to teach any one how to write poetry or the literature of ecstasy. If my views have any value, it lies in helping us recognize the literature of ecstasy. It is in aiding us to eliminate much trivial, flimsy, unecstatic free verse and regular verse from the sphere of poetry. It lies in inducing us to include much emotional prose as poetry. Since men, however, entertain so many diverse views on life, morals, and social justice, it can never be possible for critics to agree as to which literature of ecstasy is the best, for its value is affected by the question as to the truth of the ideals therein maintained. Every one thinks that he can determine what are the merits of a book. Those who have mastered the rules of prosody are certain that they can judge the qualities of poetry. But only those critics can recognize great poetry whose moral, intellectual and aesthetic faculties are well balanced. It is true that the master of rules of prosody can tell whether a verse poem follows the rules, he can perceive whether the rhymes are false, whether the rhythm is regular, even whether the figures are not far fetched and whether the diction is good; and a commonplace mind may recognize the ordinary literature of ecstasy. But the chief obstacle to recognizing poetry is that most people derive their views as to what poetry is from rules formulated from the writings of older poets. If the great poets of the world had never used a patterned form, there would have been no text books welding poetry and versification together. A great poet not only creates his own forms but displays individuality in the choice of views and ideas. When he becomes recognized, new rules are formulated from his work, and are even used as a fetter to bind later poets and critics.
Anthologists have often been of great value in choosing for us the literature of ecstasy as written by so-called minor and popular poets who have taken no position in the history of the world's literature. A poet, however, is not great because he has succeeded in producing a few pieces that belong truly to the literature of ecstasy. Nor does a poet who once held a high place in the list of poets and has subsequently lost it by the vicissitudes of taste or circ.u.mstances or by the change in ideas, cease being a poet to us if he has written poems that belong to the literature of ecstasy. No one, for example, to-day regards Jean Ingelow as a great poet, but the anthologists who select her _When Sparrows Build_ or _High Tide on the Coast of Lincolns.h.i.+re_, justly accept these poems as poetry. It will astonish many people who will take the trouble to go through the work of some so-called minor poets, say Philip Bourke Marston, to find gems here and there that properly are part of the literature of ecstasy.
My theory, I hope, also helps us to determine when certain branches of literature are poetry and when they are not. For example, there has always been a dispute as to whether oratory, comedy and satire are really poetry. There have been critics who would not admit that these species of writing are properly poetry, even in verse; on the other hand, other critics have a.s.serted that they are poetry.
When, if ever, is oratory poetry? Whenever ecstasy and not rhetoric characterizes it, when universal themes of permanent interest and not arguments on a temporal political or economic question are its substance, then oratory is poetry. A plea for adherence to the principles of a political party, a speech about an economic problem, is not as a rule poetry. But why are some of Moses's speeches and the orations of the prophets poetry? Why is Mark Antony's verse funeral oration on Caesar, poetry? Surely not because of the verse? Why are some of Bossuet's funeral orations, or Thucydides's speech in prose, poetry?
All of these orations belong to the domain of the literature of ecstasy, and hence are poetry.
Nevertheless, oratory is usually hollow and bombastic. The orator makes his appeal to men chiefly by rhetorical expression of commonplaces.
Eloquence and artifice count here more than thought or art. The less intellect the audience has the better does the orator succeed. Hazlitt saw the limitations of oratory. It is the unthinking man who is appealed to by theatrical effects. The orator must be commonplace, he cannot deliver profound views. Some of the great orations of the world's literature that are poetry are those that were never really delivered but composed by the historians, like the emotional speeches in Thucydides and Tacitus. You can find poems in orations by Demosthenes and Cicero also, but Fourth of July orations are seldom poetry. Nor is the _Congressional Record_ an anthology of poetic masterpieces. In a footnote in his book in aesthetics, _The Critique of Judgment_, Kant has ably elucidated the situation.
I must admit that a beautiful poem has always given me a pure gratification; whilst the reading of the best discourse, whether of a Roman orator or of a modern parliamentary speaker or of a preacher, has always been mingled with an unpleasant feeling of disapprobation, of a treacherous art, which means to move me in important matters like machines to a judgment that must lose all weight for them on quiet reflection.
Readiness and accuracy in speaking (which taken together const.i.tute rhetoric) belong to beautiful art; but the art of the orator, the art of availing one's self of the weaknesses of men for one's own design (whether these be well meant or even actually good, does not matter) is worthy of no respect.
We must not confuse eloquence with poetry, though there are numerous prose pieces which though eloquent are yet poetry. Mere wordiness and grandiloquence may sound like ecstasy yet lack that quality.
What can be said for famous pa.s.sages like Burke's sympathetic outburst for Marie Antoinette? I see no reason why we should not call this poetry, though it is not poetry of a high order. The objection to it is that the orator's emotion is misdirected; he wastes sympathy on a dead queen who was at the head of a pernicious system, and ignores the miseries of the thousands of poor Frenchmen. To that extent our appreciation of it is limited. For even though Burke was right when he lamented that the age of chivalry was gone, he did not state that the time of exploitation of man was over, and the question of exploitation is probably more important than that of chivalry.
There is affinity of oratory then to poetry, as it is calculated to arouse the emotions of the audience. But the political oration is usually not poetry, as it has a tendency to the ephemeral. No one will deny, however, that there is genuine prose poetry in orations by Demosthenes, Cicero, Burke, Webster and Sumner.
What is true of the oration, is also true of the sermon. Sermons like those of Jeremy Taylor and Sterne contain poetry; they have ecstasy.
There has also been considerable confusion as to how much poetry exists in witty and humorous writings and in comedy. In other words, the connection between poetry and tears is well established, but that between poetry and laughter is vague. We may say that most of the so-called humorous verse is not poetry at all, for the merely funny does not merit the term poetry. Yet there is poetry in the humorous writings of men like Mark Twain and O. Henry, on account of the ecstatic effect upon the reader. In reading them one occasionally feels impelled to tears, while moved to laughter. A mere witticism is not poetry, but it may have certain qualities, such as a bit of wisdom conveying ecstasy, which makes it poetry. The wit of Heine and Voltaire often belongs to this cla.s.s. When laughter is bound up with a profound idea or emotion, the work expressing the laugh becomes poetry. However, laughter that springs from seeing horse-play or the mere ludicrous, is not poetry. But the portrayals of Sancho Panza, Falstaff and Parson Adams are poems.
Meredith has presented the case of the comic spirit better than any one else. He says: ”The comic spirit is not hostile to the sweetest song fully poetic,” and he shows how this spirit enters the work of Menander, Aristophanes, Chaucer, Terence, Rabelais, Shakespeare, Cervantes, the Restoration Comedians, Pope, Moliere, Fielding, Smollett.