Approaches to Poetry
OP the many useful distinetiohs which Mr. Roberts makes in the course of his book, those which concern the different varieties of literary critic, and their respective functions, suggest themselves immediately as points from which to view the author's own contribution to criticism. Mr. Roberts divides critics into three groups : technical critics, whose business is to analyse and elucidate particular poems ; critics of value, whose function is to judge content and evaluate attitudes ; and theoretical critics, more properly perhaps philosophers, who discuss problems of aesthetics. The chief quality of the first must be taste, of the second judgement, of the last a trained philosophic mind. Mr. Roberts' book has been blamed for a certain lack of order in its construction, and it certainly has at times the appearance of a fortuitous series of essays, even notes, rather than of a planned whole. But this apparent disjointedness is more a consequence of its merits than a positive defect. For Mr. Roberts assumes in turn the burden of each of his three critical types, now analysing a poem to discover its mode of operation, now judging one as a work of art, and now and again digressing into abstract discussion of poetical theory. So wide a field of operations was bound to involve gaps here and there, and sometimes an uncomfortable leap from one level to another ; but the measure of the book's importance is the variety as well as the quantity of admirable exposition which it contains, and it would be unreasonable to expect this without at least a minimum loss of formal neatness.
A more just criticism might be directed against Mr. Roberts' style, which from time to time lacks that lucidity which should be the first concern of every critic. It is not enough that he should have something important or subtle to say, he must be able to say it with the minimum of complication and ambiguity. One of the greatest weaknesses of the psy- chological criticism of this century is that it has made the appreciation of literature appear a mystery in which only the initiated have an opportunity of taking part. Frightened by this, the ordinary intelligent layman is apt to leave litera- ture, and particularly poetry, severely alone as something which he cannot hope to understand. Mr. Roberts is very far from being a " mystifier " or from using jargon unwar- rantably. Indeed one of the ablest and most important sections of his Critique of Poetry is concerned with the vexed question of terminology, and the value of precision in any critical discussion. It is only that in an effort to avoid vagues ness he is occasionally inclined to tease the reader with unfamiliar words and mathematical analogies, and that his general manner of writing has a certain tendency to turgidity- But such defects are grains only in the scale against the virtue. which Mr. Roberts displays in his analyses of poems, his essays on "Fancy and Imagination" or "Signs and Symbols," and his treatment of contemporary poets. He is particularly illuminating on the subject of poetic innovation, and if one is inclined to find him a little limited in his attitude to classi- cism, his remarks on romanticism are both apt and con- clusive.
Mr. Sutherland has neither Mr. Roberts' qualities nor his defects. Lucid, charming, easy to read and to understand, he offers us a study of the part played by the medium itself in the growth and shaping of poetry. Starting with a dis- tinction between two types of poet : the Wordsworth type, to whom the original poetic experience is of paramount importance and must at all costs be communicated in its essence ; and poets of the Keats type, in whose work much is the result of the immediate excitement of composition, he proceeds to the discussion of the effects which rhythm, rhyme, association, metrical form, &e., may have on the development of a poem. In the course of these considera- tions many interesting questions crop up by the way, with which Mr. Sutherland deals altogether admirably ; but one cannot read far in his book without being overtaken by a certain irritation at its inevitable qualifications, its con- tinuous repetition of " it may be that " and " is it too much to suppose that." For Mr. Sutherland has chosen to explore a field of literature which is not in reality open to the investi- gations of the critic. The latter can only be concerned with two -things : the actual printed words on the page, their meaning, form and message (in the widest sense, of course) and the effect which they produce on him when read or recited. From the latter he may be able to generalize, and if he is a good critic he will generalize convincingly, about these effects and how they are obtained. But the question why a particular set of words came to be on the page rather than another set is one which concerns the poet alone, and can only be usefully discussed by him for the possible benefit of other poets. Mr. Sutherland's brave attempt to gauge the influence of the poetic medium on the process of com- position is too often a piece of ingenious guesswork to be more than occasionally helpful criticism.
I. M. PARSONS.
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