BOOKS AND WRITERS
ITHINK everyone agrees that the most intelligent modern poetry is extremely difficult to understand, that it is written largely for people who are themselves devoted to the practice or the criticism of the art, and that in the last fifty to seventy years poetry has undergone a series of changes which have irretrievably altered its style, its audience and its centre of vision. On the surface, one of the obvious results of these changes has been the transfer of the function and power of narrative from the hands of the poet to those of the novelist. In this transfer poets have lost one art by becoming exclusively interested in another. The particular personal approach to experience is now what counts ; not the •general way of seeing things, which was once conveniently sustained by religion or the morality of coherent social classes. For this approach the short lyric is perfectly suitable. Narrative is only rarely required. This personal approach may be called the legacy of Romanti- cism, if we .think of that revolution as reaching its climax in the short poem of real, moving incident such as "Resolution and Independence." It is also the legacy of historical causes such as the change in religion, general knowledge, hygiene, class, factory and farm which took place in the last century. Disregarding neces- sarily almost all .the links in the chain which lead us from the social revolution to the firlished poem on the anthologist's .desk, we may say that the only security of a -profound (sometimes even of an apparent) kind that the poet can now find for truth is himself—and for an audience his circle of friends. Personal poetry reaches the apex of its power as a form. Poets multiply ; readers dwindle. Education makes more people literate but unwilling to attend.
• The achievements of this personal poetry, while acknowledged to be difficult, cannot but compare extremely favourably with com- parable minor poetry, in previous ages. Not only the flower, but the muscles and bones, of twentieth-century intellect and feeling have gone into this forms There are many people who do not read much poetry who decry the poetry of today. What excites more serious attention is the fact that many people who have 'devoted themselves to contemporary verse decry the earth, streets, rulers, prime ministers, cinematograph proprietors, newspaper-owners, fac- tories and so on, which have become the subject-matter of their poetry by co-existing in the same city, town or countryside. There are admirable reasons for the criticism, even the unrelenting criticism, of present-day society, trends, culture, morals, manners and impo- tence. But Professor Pinto, whose short history of modern verse* raises and surveys these problems in relation to poetry, gives the impression, by assuming that western civilisation is doomed, of writing from a tired point of view.
This is a pity. His subject is the vigorous achievement of poetry at the centre of an important revolution. Professor Pinto makes the mistake, I believe, of concentrating on the crisis instead of keeping his eye on the achievement. Tragedy, whatever its few—and there are only a few—different manifestations have been in the course of time, is the central theme of poetry. Any new discovery that the poet makes, either in experience or technique or observation, that may bring him nearer to a perfect tragic expression, is to be con- sidered a gain, or a minor triumph. Look at society from the point of view of moralist, religious, politician, judge, doctor, civil servant or business-man, you look at it from a point of view which will be incorporated in a subsidiary position by the poet,. if he is to use it at all. The fact that these people themselves are not supposed to be interested in poetry need not have a harmful, and might well have a stimulating, influence on the poetry that is written about them. Where the society is in a condition with which the poet can- not sympathise he withdraws. How far poets have withdrawn in the last two generations is becoming clear from the reactionary secession of readers from an interest in their verse. But should this be called a crisis in poetry, when the poetry written from the poet's state of secession is good ? We can tell there is a crisis in international affairs, but can we say there is a crisis in poetry ?
I do not think we can say, as Professor Pinto seems to suggest, that poetry is losing its former power because society has lost its spiritual values, or that the ascendancy of scientific technology in public interest and affairs automatically causes a weakening in those seceded portions of society which still devote themselves to the technique of the imagination. If we look at the course of poetry in these years we see a series of successful revolutions. The'theme of
*Crisis in English Poetry. 1880-1940. By V. de kPinto. (Hutchinsons University Library. 7s. 6d.) the best history of this period should be that of "crises overcome." If we distinguish the crisis in the relations between poet and society, which has caused the commonly decried esotericism of poetry, from the technical crisis within poetry itself, we see that the last has been the really creative development of this century. The former is much older than Chatterton. The fact that the technical crisis has been overcome in the face of the social disturbances is, I believe, a justi- fication of secessionism in poetry for those who are not convinced by the countless individual examples from the previous course of literary history. I should draw a conclusion contrary to that of Professor Pinto, that the social and political disturbances of this period have enriched the soil of experience for the poet, and though he has become a proletarian in the course of these disturbances, the new tools he has perfected for the cultivation of his soil are an improvement in many ways on any that have been used before. It is clear that the revolution in the form and outlook of poetry has left the short personal lyric, or the sequence of ideas, dominating in place of impersonal narrative or class-entrenched satire. Then again psychological learning has put into the hands of the personal lyrical poet a stimulus of immense depth and vigour. People will also agree that the great dramatic narrative, which is by nature a major form of art, can be once again deployed from the background of literary attention into the front, so long as it is cast within the lines held firmly by the individual mind. Professor Pinto's demonstration of this idea in-relation to The Dynasts is convincing ; and he is also probably right in stressing, pessimistic as the idea is, that the great poem framed decisively, in its highest and lowest values, by the individual mind cannot by nature be as great as the poem which used to have the backing of a universal Church and the-common assent of all people that what it said was true. • in recording as he does, step by step, the history of the crisis in English poetry from 1880 to 1940, thereby bringing in Hopkins and Hardy, the Rhymers, Kipling and Chesterton, the Imagists and also the many lesser movements or ,circles, like the Georgians, up to the near-present, he is doing a difficult and thankless thing. The business of being fair to everybody who wrote poetry in this time ought to have torn away his patience. But fair he is on the positive side. On the negative side he does not do sufficient justice to Ezra Pound, whose personal influence was an essential part of the revolution in technique. To achieve "hard light and clear edges," and compel everyone else who mattered to admire and achieve it, physical and executive energy as resourceful as that of a tycoon, as well as poetic ability, seems to have been necessary. The record of this great and lasting gift to English poetic diction is, of course, contained in Pound's letters, which Professor Pinto could not have read.
Then his bias towards the work of that "major poet" Edith Sitwell does not seem justified by the lines he quotes. He over- stresses, too, a distinction that in the end loses its meaning ; that is, the idea that there are two voyages the poet can make, the "voyage without," and the "voyage within," We see very soon, if we follow the latter, that it can only be expressed in terms of the former, and the idea is reduced to quibbling with words. He has one, I think, big romance, and that is that popular culture, such as Hardy found on heaths, and Synge and Yeats in Galway or Aran, is by nature good, or at least better than urban culture. What probably is true is that Hardy, Yeats and Synge proceeded towards ultimate self- knowledge in- so far as they regressed into pristine ignorance.
Finally, to bring Professor Pinto's history up to date, a fourth series of Poems of Todayt has now appeared, covering the years 1938-1947. In this small volume of 218 pages there are 110 poets. Nothing more like a race in which the starters have lost control of an enormous field could be imagined. In despair of how to sort them out, the anonymous compilers, who are appointed by the English Association, have arranged them in alphabetical order, of all orders in poetry perhaps the silliest. There are many fine poems in the book, not always the best that their authors have written, but the allotting of space has been guided by well-meaning indecision. Schoolboys, if they read the book, will find the historical sense necessary to full enjoyment of poetry shattered and will probably give up. But with Professor Pinto's safe, well-arranged survey of the times to clarify the muddle in poetry which the English Association has helped to make worse, all should be well.
RICHARD MURPHY.
tPoems of Today. Fourth Series. (Macmillan. 7s. 6c1.)
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