NEW LAMPS FOR OLD

Miss Bedell, and Other Poems. By Claude Colleer Alibott. (Chatto and Windus. 3s. net.)

Exile. By Benj. Gilbert Brooks. (Privately printed ,Dijon, 1923. 2s. 6d. net.) The Thirteenth Caesar. By Sacheverell Sitwell. (Grant Richards. 68. net.)

THESE four books of verse (though, as between themselves, by no means of equal value or interest) would, I think, all be classed, by those who use the term, as the work of " rebels." All of these writers, with varying degrees of success, seek to set down what they themselves have observed and felt in the form which they regard as best suited to their observation and feeling. They have not necessarily or (in Mr. Sitwell's case) at all used the old subject-matter of verse, and hardly one of them ever uses a traditional shape. By certain self- constituted custodians of poetic tradition they would all be dismissed as unworthy of serious examination. But before I am prepared to be a Draco, I should wish to be a little more certain of my ground. A legislator should be clear that what he aims at creating is laws, and not outlaws !

It is, perhaps, worth while, therefore, asking ourselves one or two questions respecting the nature of verse, and, even if this leads us to metaphysics, we had better face the struggle. I do not, I wish to make it clear, propose to ask what is the distinction between verse and prose. There is, of course, a distinction as clear as that between dreaming and waking, but in neither case has this yet been stated. But I would only ask with reference to verse in general, and these writers in particular, what is the business of the poet ? Now, in this matter, I am an unrepentant neo-Kantian, by which I mean, a person who reads Kant in the translation which F. H. Bradley did not write. And I go back to the Kantian theory of Design. It will, I think, be generally admitted that nothing is so disturbing as an objective fact in the darkness. Anybody, for example, who has barked his shins against a chair when groping for the electric light will bear this out. But the mind is just as much disturbed by that impact as the body. The mind hates darkness and it hates the unassimilated. Consequently, all human knowledge aims at arranging and explaining away the apparently unconnected. A ghost, or a slum, for example, is terrifying not because it exists, but because it can't. When, therefore,

the mind is presented with a bewildering collection of uncon- nected ghosts in the shape of the ordinary facts of existence, it wanders about disconsolately barking its shins against their materialized effluvia in the dark. Till Darwin, or some- body else, suddenly switches on the electric light, crying " Evolution." Then, with a cry of relief, the mind observes all these restless phenomena click into position, and it has acquired a new faith. It is not my affair here to examine the logical basis of that faith. I merely use it as an illustra- tion which leads up to the theory that all art consists in arrangement, or, in other words, in translating the object into the subject. You cannot, for example, bark your shins on a painting of a chair, though if the painter were, say, Gauguin, a number of the critics might. The fact is that art is the triumph over the inexplicable or, at least, the unexplained. Music takes unrelated noises, and surpasses the intellectual triumphs of the mathematician. Architecture takes space and converts it into Time, and poetry takes unrelated thought and sound, and presents them in a new organic unity, like a crystal, completely satisfying the human demand for arrangement. A triangle, as a complete epigram of the unity of sense and thought, is good, hut the poet goes even further than the triangle. He, as it were, plays it " Perfectly ! " say the critics of " the rebel." " We do not accept any of your argument, which is fantastic, but we like your conclusions. Arrangement ! Now, where in the spiritual Bolshevism, of which these four writers are typical, do you find any trace of it ? Out of your own mouth you have condemned them." But wait ! Let us take Mr. Abbott first. Neither in his metres nor in his rhymes does he at first sight suggest arrangement. But consider for a moment those lines about the moon :—

" Terror and blood, she spells.

At edge of earth, this peep-hole from eternal night in Hell, Whence mortal eye might dare The flames that lick the everlasting dead, To gaze upon the turbulent proud heads That twitch contorted there."

I think that it is not impossible that Mr. Abbott intends " spells " and " " dead " and " Heads " to bear some relation to each other. " Now is that a rhyme ? " you ask, indignantly. " No," I reply with equal terseness, " it's an assonance," which I understand, was Beowulf's method of arranging sounds. But that is the least of it. The thing observed is more important still. There is a red and dangerous aspect of the moon, in which, like a murderer unapprehended, Selene stalks through heaven. Well, Mr. Abbott has appre- hended her in that aspect, and she is, in consequence, no longer at large. Or, take a phrase from " Sad Time of the Year " :—

" And the rover cuckoo's calling, calling,

Breaks from a haunted bell to a stuttered warning."

As we know, in the late summer the cuckoo's cry is more like " tuck-cuck-000 " than its spring call. But bells aren't " haunted," though they may " haunt." Of course they can be haunted, yes, and haunt at the same time—and one word may express, or hint at, both meanings. And that is what I mean by imposing design in the objective.

Or take Mr. Prewett. I do not defend him when his grammar goes red, as in

" Like the kind God meant we should."

But there is no need to defend

Then the leaves drip and fret, All the bravery spoiled, The wings wet, wet, And beaten, and soiled.

Alas, what end to delight And nectar-drinkinip When the imps of rain, Unfeeling, unshrinking, Drown the glades, and the sharp winds bite."

Everybody, including bees and butterflies, hates getting wet' and the insulting rain goes on soaking the just, and the unjust alike. But not now, because Mr. Prewett has put it in its place, and it will (if I may use slang) " stay put." I am not claiming for either Mr. Abbott or Mr. Prewett that he is yet " poet " in the absolute sense of that lovely word. But they are both occupied with the poet's business of " making." We have still to see how far they succeed. But what is already clear is that they are not falling into the fatal error of " imitating." That great critic and poet, Matthew Arnold, amazingly said that poetry was imitation of life, though the

truth is that life should be imitation of poetry. At least, however, we can prevent poetry from becoming an imitation of death.

Mr. Brooks does not, I fear, quite fall into the same category as Mr. Abbott and Mr. Prewett. He also is setting down what he himself has observed and felt in his own way. But he has not yet (I feel) imposed the design, with which he seeks to mould the object, upon himself. " Free Verse " is only entitled to be free when it has earned its freedom by hard labour. Mr. Brooks has had an individual glimpse of order, even of beauty, but it oozes out at the edges, because he has not yet disciplined himself. Perhaps he will : I very 'much hope he will. For the result might well be interesting.

Finally, I find in Mr. Sitwell, not merely a " maker," but one who has already " made " successfully. Unlike Mr- Brooks', his verse is entitled to its freedom, because, like a bird in flight, it is constantly stating motion in terms of thought. Let me quote :-

" A white sail sparkles like a netted cloud,

Snared to draw the ship along each time the wind blows loud ; But hoarse do the conches sound above the waves, The cold main calming, And in this sudden stillness the great Sea-God glitters, Drawn by his tritons down the flat blue fields, Shrill music with him.

But the horns die far away, the waves start to snow, Neptune rides beneath another sky, Sunlight flickers : sharp winds sigh."

I can't help feeling, on reading these words, that Homer's constant complaint against the sea that it is " unharvested " is no longer true. Mr. Sitwell has brought it home on the wain.

HUMBERT WOLFE.