Obliquity in Poetry
Poetry, Direct and Oblique. By E. M. W. Tillyard. (Chatto and Windus. 8s. 6d.) A GOOD poem, like a symphony or painting, must always tend to lose its freshness and its early vigour as we become accus- tomed to it. With many people, taste in poetry and the arts, and judgement of people and of places, is no more than an affectionate memory of early impressions. To revive, enhance and modify these impressions by discovering some approach to the poem which is unusual, yet not irrelevant or trivial, is one function of the critic, and Dr. Tillyard in his present book, as in his Milton, continually shows that critical ability.
Dr. Tillyard achieves his end by a discussion of obliquity, the quality by which a poem produces an effect far different from that which would result from a plain statement of the " meaning " of the poem. Used in this way, it is clear that " obliquity " includes the whole of poetic technique, and that every poem is, as Dr. Tillyard admits, more or less oblique. But the distinction is useful : Goldsmith's picture of Auburn in The Deserted Village is less oblique than The Echoing Green of Blake. The Echoing Green symbolizes some- thing other than its prose significance : it is a particular statement of a general truth, and the general is conveyed through the particular far more effectively than it would be in a direct statement. For a direct statement, no matter what its truth and importance may be, often has no compulsion, no emotional effect : it has become commonplace :
" In the world's history a great commonplace is every now and then brought forth, and poetry may be concerned in its birth ; but those that already exist must be kept alive. They are in perpetual danger of perishing. They have to be refelt continually and reformulated by human experience. They cease to be true unless continually ratified by fresh expression."
This is not, of course, the only purpose for which obliquity is used : there is, for example, the oblique presentation of sensibility, the apparently casual way in which a poet will use his theme as an excuse for making precise observation : " For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crown'd, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; On shining Altars of Japan they raise The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze : From silver spoons the grateful liquors glide, While China's earth receives the smoking tide."
The means, too, by which obliquity may operate are diverse : rhythm, symbolism, allusion, plot, character, mythology ; and Dr. Tillyard contrives incidentally, while discussing these, to make enlivening remarks on a wide diversity of subjects. He argues, whilst pleading for a con- temporary poetry of statement, that Don Juan and The Prelude should be regarded as the culmination of the Augustan tradition ; he discusses the compactness and homogeneity of seventeenth-century culture, contrasting it with the present-day diversity when " a man may be learned in trans- lations from the Chinese who has never heard of the Castalian Spring, or have read a handbook of St. Thomas Aquinas without being able to construe an essay of Montaigne." He opens a defence of Shelley, and begins the task—long overdue —of demonstrating that it is possible to appreciate that poet in a way at once intelligent and appropriate.
But against these incidental virtues we must set certain objections : the conception of obliquity is not new, and to use it to cover the existing terms, symbolism, allegory, metaphor, rhythm and allusion, and to use the word " rhythm " to cover all the sound effects of a poem is to diminish, instead of increasing, the precision of critical analysis. It compels the critic either to use one dichotomy to cover a multitude of distinctions, or to employ the old terms in addition to the new. Further, to use the word oblique " in this way is to accept, by implication, the doctrine that the "direct" function of speech can be fulfilled by the use of " prosaic " scientific language, and that reliance upon sound-effects and association is primitive and in- essential. But the whole point about the poetic statement of the great commonplac es " is that the poetic statement is complete, and commonplace is not ; and if a statement is incomplete, there is little point in calling it " direct."
Dr. Tillyard, in fact, is not continuously aware of the nature of language and the diversity of verbal function, and he under- estimates the importance of rhyme, rhythm, assonance, alliteration and sound-sequences. He does not point out that " sensibility " in a poet is essentially a verbal habit, and that " losing oneself in the object contemplated " is simply a preliminary condition ; nor does he mention when quoting Wordsworth's definition of a poet that it fails to distinguish the poet from any other artist. Again, he sees Mr. Eliot's " Grishkin" merely as a recondite and inappropriate allusion to Gautier's "Carmen." It does not occur to him that Mr. Eliot is simply borrowing a rhythm, and that the change in tone which he detects arises from Mr. Eliot's replacement of Gautier's light consonants by her. --ier. Nor does he, when condemning 'Mr. Eliot's final stanza in comparison with Gautier's, draw attention to the ingenious consonantal pattern which is characteristic of Mr. Eliot's quatrains and helps to make them more memorable than Gautier's.
Dr. Tillyard does much to increase our apprehension of poetry, and he shows us more in Lycidas or in the Faerie Qucene than we had suspected, but there is one danger in this intelligent and subtle criticism : " Obliquity " is a function of reader as well as of poet : and Dr. Tillyard's method, unless it is combined with the personal integrity, the sense of balance and the classical detachment of a Johnson, is liable to produce in intellectual readers a hypertrophy of the -verbal sensibility which will make them find poetry in the blunt common place itself, and Goldsmith's Village Green as
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