Part 1 (1/2)

Oxford Lectures on Poetry

by Andrew Cecil Bradley

PREFACE

This volu my tenure of the Chair of Poetry at Oxford and not included in _Shakespearean Tragedy_ Most of theed, and all have been revised As they were given at intervals, and the majority before the publication of that book, they contained repetitions which I have not found it possible wholly to remove Readers of a lecture published by the University of Manchester on _English Poetry and Gere of Wordsworth_ will pardon also the restatement of some ideas expressed in it

The several lectures are dated, as I have been unable to take account of most of the literature on their subjects published since they were delivered

They are arranged in the order that seems best to me, but it is of importance only in the case of the four which deal with the poets of Wordsworth's tiates of the University Press, and to the proprietors and editors of the _Hibbert Journal_ and the _Albany_, _Fortnightly_, and _Quarterly Reviews_, respectively, for perhth, and ninth lectures A like acknowledgment is due for leave to use some sentences of an article on Keats contributed to _Chalish Literature_ (1903)

In the revision of the proof-sheets I owed much help to a sister who has shared many of my Oxford friendshi+ps

NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION

This edition is substantially identical with the first; but it and its later impressions contain a few improvements in points of detail, and, thanks to criticisms byclearer in soht in the first edition which I regret In adding the note on p 247 I forgot that I had not referred to Professor Dowden in the lecture on ”Shakespeare the Man” In everything that I have written on Shakespeare I am indebted to Professor Dowden, and certainly not least in that lecture

POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE

One who, after twenty years, is restored to the University where he was taught and first tried to teach, and who has received at the hands of his Alma Mater an honour of which he never dreamed, is tempted to speak both of himself and of her But I rereat subject, and not to s about myself; and of Oxford who that holds this Professorshi+p could dare to speak, when he recalls the exquisite verse in which one of his predecessors described her beauty, and the prose in which he gently touched on her illusions and protested that they were as nothing when set against her age-long warfare with the Philistine? How, again, re him and others, should I venture to praise my predecessors?

It would be pleasant to do so, and even pleasanter to , I quoted to you soes But I could not do this for five years Sooner or later, my oords would have to come, and the inevitable contrast Not to sharpen it noill be silent concerning theet the them, or the responsibility which it entails

The words 'Poetry for poetry's sake' recall the famous phrase 'Art for Art' It is far fros of that phrase, or all the questions it involves I propose to state briefly what I understand by 'Poetry for poetry's sake,' and then, after guarding against one or two le proble to justify them, certain explanations We are to consider poetry in its essence, and apart from the flahich in most poems accompany their poetry We are to include in the idea of poetry the ard this as apoems, we are to think of a poe here at accuracy, we may say that an actual poehts, e as poetically as we can[2] Of course this iinative experience--if I may use the phrase for brevity--differs with every reader and every tirees But that insurs and does not concern us now

What then does the formula 'Poetry for poetry's sake' tell us about this experience? It says, as I understand it, these things First, this experience is an end in itself, is worth having on its own account, has an intrinsic value Next, its _poetic_ value is this intrinsic worth alone Poetry ion; because it conveys instruction, or softens the passions, or furthers a good cause; because it brings the poet fame or money or a quiet conscience So much the better: let it be valued for these reasons too But its ulterior worth neither is nor can directly deterinative experience; and this is to be judged entirely from within And to these two positions the forh not of necessity, a third The consideration of ulterior ends, whether by the poet in the act of co, tends to lower poetic value It does so because it tends to change the nature of poetry by taking it out of its own atmosphere For its nature is to be not a part, nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but to be a world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you nore for the ti to you in the other world of reality

Of the ive rise I will glance only at one or two The offensive consequences often drawn from the formula 'Art for Art' will be found to attach not to the doctrine that Art is an end in itself, but to the doctrine that Art is the whole or supreme end of human life And as this latter doctrine, which seems to me absurd, is in any case quite different from the former, its consequences fall outside my subject The for to say on the various questions of ment which arise from the fact that poetry has its place in ait says, the intrinsic value of poetry ht be so small, and its ulterior effects so mischievous, that it had better not exist The formula only tells us that we ood, for poetry is one kind of huood; and that we ood by direct reference to another If we do, we shall find ourselvese did not expect If poetic value lies in the stiht_ is no better a poem than many a tasteless version of a Psalm: if in the excitement of patriotisht?_ if in the ation of the passions, the Odes of Sappho in but little praise: if in instruction, Arain, our for poetry away froe a problematic as well as brief There is plenty of connection between life and poetry, but it is, so to say, a connection underground The two : one of the (in the usual sense) reality, but seldoination; while the other offers soination but has not full 'reality' They are parallel developments which nowhere meet, or, if I may use loosely a hich will be serviceable later, they are analogues Hence we understand one by help of the other, and even, in a sense, care for one because of the other; but hence also, poetry neither is life, nor, strictly speaking, a copy of it They differ not only because one has more mass and the other a more perfect shape, but because they have different _kinds_ of existence The one touches us as beings occupying a given position in space and tis, desires, and purposes due to that position: it appeals to iination, but appeals to much besides What meets us in poetry has not a position in the same series of time and space, or, if it has or had such a position, it is taken apart froed to it there;[3] and therefore it s, desires, and purposes, but speaks only to conteination the reverse of eination saturated with the results of 'real'

experience, but still contemplative Thus, no doubt, one main reason why poetry has poetic value for us is that it presents to us in its oay so which we meet in another form in nature or life; and yet the test of its poetic value for us lies siination; the rest of us, our knowledge or conscience, for exa it only so far as they appear transe or his reatness of soul, Shelley's 'hate of hate' and 'love of love,'

and that desire to help men or make them happier which may have influenced a poet in hours of meditation--all these have, as such, no poetical worth: they have that worth only when, passing through the unity of the poet's being, they reappear as qualities of ihty powers in the world of poetry

I come to a third misapprehension, and so to my main subject This for: it is really a doctrine of form for for as he says the thing well The _what_ is poetically indifferent: it is the _how_ that counts Matter, subject, content, substance, deter; there is no subject hich poetryNay, more: not only is the matter indifferent, but it is the secret of Art to ”eradicate the matter by means of the form,”'--phrases and statements like these meet us everywhere in current criticism of literature and the other arts

They are the stock-in-trade of writers who understand of them little eois' But we find them also seriously used by writers elike one or another of theht be quoted, for example, from Professor Saintsbury, the late R A

M Stevenson, Schiller, Goethe himself; and they are the ords of a school in the one country where Aesthetics has flourished They come, as a rule, from men who either practise one of the arts, or, froeneral reader--a being so general that I ed by the robbed of al me,' he says, 'to look at the Dresden Madonna as if it were a Persian rug You are telling me that the poetic value of _Hamlet_ lies solely in its style and versification, and that my interest in the man and his fate is only an intellectual or e that, if I want to enjoy the poetry of _Crossing the Bar_, I must not mind what Tennyson says there, butit But in that case I can care no more for a poem than I do for a set of nonsense verses; and I do not believe that the authors of _Haarded their poems thus'

These antitheses of subject,on the other, are the field through which I especially want, in this lecture, to indicate a way It is a field of battle; and the battle is waged for no trivial cause; but the cries of the couous Those phrases of the so-called fors Taken in one sense they seeeneral reader not unnaturally takes them, they seem to me false and mischievous It would be absurd to pretend that I can end in a few minutes a controversy which concerns the ultimate nature of Art, and leads perhaps to problems not yet soluble; but we can at least draw some plain distinctions which, in this controversy, are too often confused

In the first place, then, let us take 'subject' in one particular sense; let us understand by it that which we have in viehen, looking at the title of an un-read poem, we say that the poet has chosen this or that for his subject The subject, in this sense, so far as I can discover, is generally soinary, as it exists in the minds of fairly cultivated people The subject of _Paradise Lost_ would be the story of the Fall as that story exists in the general i people The subject of Shelley's stanzas _To a Skylark_ would be the ideas which arise in thethe poem, he hears the word 'skylark' If the title of a poe to us, the 'subject' appears to be either e should gather by investigating the title in a dictionary or other book of the kind, or else such a brief suggestion as ht be offered by a person who had read the poem, and who said, for example, that the subject of _The Ancient Mariner_ was a sailor who killed an albatross and suffered for his deed