[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Sm,—Mr. W. H. Ward
dislikes Miss Sitwell's poem because he cannot understand it. Your Poetry Editor, though " very far from completely understanding the poem even after repeated reading," admires it.
It is implied that (a) one would necessarily admire the poem if one could understand it ; (b) if one does not admire it one betrays lack of understanding. But is it not possible that (a) there is very little in the poem to understand ; (b) that, having understood that little, one might still find it silly and unin- teresting ? Is it not rather probable that a poem which is
unintelligible after repeated reading by a sympathetic critic who meets the author with a Polonius-like deference to certain naive comparisons is indeed void of intelligible content ? Discussion of " modern tendencies," of which apparent obscurity is often accounted one, in poetry, as in music, is apt to lead to the association of utterly dissimilar artists for the sake of some purely superficial similarity. Recalling some of the articles on " modem music " of the early years of the century, with their references to " composers like Strauss and Debussy "—even to-day one sees the names of Delius, Schon- berg, Bartok, Stravinsky and Scriabin herded together at random in a single sentence to exemplify some hypothetical conception of " modernity "—I regret to find the fashionable vendors of gingerbread verse, jugglers of little coloured balls of verbiage, associated in the columns of the Spectator, even by implication, with the author of " Terminology," a poet of real vision and creative imagination allied to an acute and penetrating intellect, whose little book, Behind the Eyes, is, in the opinion of more than one reader, the most significant con- tribution of the last ten years to English poetry.—I am,
Previous page
