THE POET AT THE DOOR
• By PATRIC DICKINSON
" And if men say no drop in rapture's cup but is some beauty known, and re-engendered
now, as hereafter, for the millionth time, remember lost Atlantis silted up and crawling seas between the beauties squandered- of gods face downward in the ocean slime."
YOU had better read that again slowly ; or perhaps write it out in international phonetic script in case it deceives you. It is full of stock poetical words that have lost caste—Right words that have been returned unopposed too long as Members for the sonnet. You know what it means, of course. But does it mean now what it did twenty years ago? In the same way, walking upon Brighton front, you will see a new sign over a door saying " Psychological Adviser " which then said " Palmist." Both were a way of saying it, but " our time " has its own modes of periphrasis. " From words, not ideas, poetry is made."
But the young man, revolving round Auden like an ever-waning moon, is appalled at the suggestion that twenty years ago he might have revolved likewise round Humbert Wolfe. It is not strange that a critic today crying "Wolfe! Wolfe!" should meet with the tradi- tional responle. There is no Wolfe there again. He has no " tower- ing intellect " as Auden has, though towering is a dangerous adjective to use to a generation alert for ambiguities and aware that Yeats's tower symbolised something half-dead at the top. To re-read Humbert Wolfe now, and remember that his best book Requiem was reprinted six times between April and December, 1927, is certainly a salutary exercise. How and why was he so widely esteemed as a poet? We know him to have been a brilliant Civil Servant, a great wit (as his lampoons show), a man of great sensi- bility, but what about his poetry?
It has certain definite qualities—an immense skill and facility, a vocabulary peculiar to himself and in that way original, a sense of wit or of repartee, a dull rhythm mechanical- and defective, a kind of glamour, an immediate effervescence. (The cliché epithet is " heady ".) In fact it has most of the qualities of the first-rate tub-thumper. But can you, so to speak, read him after you have gone home? It is pappy sniff ; his couplets are like the two toy guns of the fancy-dress cowboy. Only for •a moment are you held up. The same thing applies to his symbols—those of the Harlequin- ade : Pierrot, Pierrette, Pantaloon, Policeman and so on. In terms of cards it is the difference between the Tarot and Happy Families. But, and this is important, how many readers have felt horror at the Hanged Man? If we knew the Tarot as we know Mr. Dose the Doctor we should be quite at home with him, and indeed pleased to receive him. It is a mistake to over-value the esoteric vocabulary or symbolism just as it is a mistake to ask only the time of Wolfe's Policeman. Self-conscious subtlety is no more nor less valuable than artful simplicity. Wolfe, from his little whimsies about Kensington Gardens to his psychological ballet Reverie for Policeman, concocted a brand of poetical pink pill easy to swallow, and his own belief in his simples caused many others to believe in them also, convinced beyond logic by the orator's gift, the barker's or cheapjack's kind of magic. "From words, not ideas, poetry is made." The words of Hamlet remain, " monuments of unaging intellect." Succeeding generations have interpreted them a thousand different ways, but the words remain absolute. The words of the orator, however, are not meant to last longer than mayflies. They must catch the instant trout, the imme- diate spirit of the time ; they must be in a style that even next week may be out of date. Lavishly tipped by his uncle Rhetoric young Oratory spends his words in quick satisfactions. The public licks at the orator-poet like an ice-cream cornet.
There are two main approaches: open-handed simplicity, an attractive innocence ; or close-fisted complexity, a seductive mystifica- tion. Observe the basic difference in two very similar couplets. This from Wolfe :
" When the ancient ape or fish
Moulds man's spirit to their wish."
This from Auden: " In my brain there is a with And a memory of fish."
It is difficult to deny to Auden many of the qualities possessed by Wolfe, in kind if not in degree. Productive facility, a peculiar and original vocabulary, a recurrent lot of symbolic terms, a defective ear combined with great technical adroitness,' an immediate efferves- cence which is intoxicating but may lead to a hangover, a quick wit —the qualities again of tke soap-box, though not indeed the soft- soap-box. In a sense Wolfe scores because he leaves you free to do your own thinking ; he isn't selling you that one. But Auden sells you Thought—" Let me do your thinking for you "—and leaves many readers with a nice sense of being wiser than they are. But have they taken the poem in, or has it taken them in?
The success of the orator or the magician depends upon the gullibility of the audience as well as his own ability. The word " magic " is a constant in the criticism of poetry. Apart from its occult meaning, it may mean " an inexplicable or remarkable influence producing surprising results." It is, therefore, not an inappropriate word to use to define the actual connection between the poet and the reader. In this sense Pope may be as magical to one as Blake is to another. Unluckily many poets practise magic in its occult sense also, and upon all grades from absolute mysticism to sixpenny palmistry, and they deceive all grades of recipient on the same scale. Magic exists as a medium, and the act of connection is likely to suspend critical judgement ; just as most children are conceived in the dark. It seems as if certain poets arouse an ephemeral kind of desire. It is not in the least shameful ; only it does not wear. This is true for both sides.
In some poets our desire for them is transient ; in others it seems as if their desire for us is ephemeral, and because of this we respond quickly, often violently, and uncritically. It is our surrender to a force occult or of inexplicable or remarkable influence, which may not be poetic at all, and the results are, for both sides, surprising. Even Byron was surprised.
At the present moment such direct experience, whether it is aesthetic or not, is little regarded as a canon of criticism. We do not look at a picture ; we look at our theory of art and see how far the picture complies with it. If it does it is good ; if it does not the artist is to blame (and has not heard of, or respected, our theory as he ought to do). Poetry is too often similarly treated. It is not difficult to develop a theory of poetry by isolating a particular element common to certain poets. This one brings together Humbert Wolfe and W. H. Auden as two remarkable examples of poetical orators or sales- men. That is not to say that they are identical in all respects but that their common quality of once-and-never-again is one to con- template, and Wolfe himself provides an excellent memento: "remember lost Atlantis silted up
and crawling seas between the beauties squandered of gods face downwards in the ocean slime."
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