Part 4 (1/2)
Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we read. But this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historically, they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really. They may count to us historically. The course of development of a nation's language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet's work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in criticising it; in short, to over-rate it. So arises in our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic.
Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings, and circ.u.mstances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here also we over-rate the object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments--the fallacy caused by an estimate which we may call personal.
Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally the study of the history and development of a poetry may incline a man to pause over reputations and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a careless public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and habit, from one famous name or work in its national poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole process of growth in its poetry. The French have become diligent students of their own early poetry, which they long neglected; the study makes many of them dissatisfied with their so-called cla.s.sical poetry, the court-tragedy of the seventeenth century, a poetry which Pellisson[68] long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic stamp, with its _politesse sterile et rampante?_[69] but which nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the perfection of cla.s.sical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is natural; yet a lively and accomplished critic, M. Charles d'Hericault,[70] the editor of Clement Marot, goes too far when he says that ”the cloud of glory playing round a cla.s.sic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history.” ”It hinders,” he goes on, ”it hinders us from seeing more than one single point, the culminating and exceptional point, the summary, fict.i.tious and arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It subst.i.tutes a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study but veneration; it does not show us how the thing is done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for the historian this creation of cla.s.sic personages is inadmissible; for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his proper life, it breaks historical relations.h.i.+ps, it blinds criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the investigation of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no longer, but a G.o.d seated immovable amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; and hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to believe that it did not issue ready made from that divine head.”
All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet's cla.s.sic character. If he is a dubious cla.s.sic, let us sift him; if he is a false cla.s.sic, let us explode him. But if he is a real cla.s.sic, if his work belongs to the cla.s.s of the very best (for this is the true and right meaning of the word _cla.s.sic, cla.s.sical_), then the great thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry.
Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious.
True, we must read our cla.s.sic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded with superst.i.tion; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it drops out of the cla.s.s of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine cla.s.sic, to acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical relations.h.i.+ps, is mere literary dilettantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we know about a cla.s.sic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate philological groundwork which we requite them to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were not so short, and schoolboys' wits not so soon tired and their power of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate philological preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less enjoyed.
So with the investigator of ”historic origins” in poetry. He ought to enjoy the true cla.s.sic all the better for his investigations; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the less good he overbusies himself, and is p.r.o.ne to over-rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him.
The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relations.h.i.+ps cannot be absent from a compilation like the present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it will be a.s.signed to those persons for exhibition who are known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no special inclination towards them. Moreover the very occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance. In the present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, nevertheless, we must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, the truly cla.s.sic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the one principle to which, as the _Imitation_ says, whatever we may read or come to know, we always return. _c.u.m multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire principium._[71]
The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the literary men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So we hear Caedmon,[72] amongst, our own poets, compared to Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for ”historic origins.” Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet,[73]
comments upon that famous doc.u.ment of the early poetry of his nation, the _Chanson de Roland._[74] It is indeed a most interesting doc.u.ment.
The _joculator_ or _jongleur_ Taillefer, who was with William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched before the Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing ”of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of the va.s.sals who died at Roncevaux”; and it is suggested that in the _Chanson de Roland_ by one Turoldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a ma.n.u.script of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a doc.u.ment of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, in its details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise due to epic poetry of the highest order only, and to no other. Let us try, then, the _Chanson de Roland_ at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down under a pine-tree, with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy--
”De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist, De tantes teres c.u.me li bers cunquist, De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l'nurrit.”[75]
That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient for it.
But now turn to Homer--
[Greek: Os phato tous d aedae katecheu phusizoos aia en Lakedaimoni authi, philm en patridi gaim][76]
We are here in another world, another order of poetry altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the _Chanson de Roland_. If our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior.
Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the cla.s.s of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them. Short pa.s.sages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have just quoted from Homer, the poet's comment on Helen's mention of her brothers;--or take his
[Greek:]
A delo, to sphoi domen Paelaei anakti Thnaeta; umeis d eston agaero t athanato te.
ae ina dustaenoiosi met andrasin alge echaeton;[77]
the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus;--or take finally his
[Greek:]
Kai se, geron, to prin men akouomen olbion einar[78]
the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous words--
”Io no piangeva; s dentro impietrai.
Piangevan elli ...”[79]
take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil--
”Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, Ne fiamma d'esto incendio non m'a.s.sale ...”[80]
take the simple, but perfect, single line--
”In la sua volontade e nostra pace.”[81]