The Poets Poet | Page 3

value of faithful imitation.--The realists.--Poetry as a solace.--Poetry a reflection of the ideal essence of things.--Love of beauty the poet's guide in disentangling ideality from the accidents of things.--Beauty as truth.--The poet as seer.--The quarrel with the philosopher.--The truth of beauty vs. cold facts.--Proof of validity of the poet's truth.--His skill as prophet.--The poet's mission as reformer.--His impatience with practical reforms.--Belief in essential goodness of men, since beauty is the essence of things.--Reform a matter of allowing all things to express their essence.--Enthusiasm for liberty.--Denial of the war-poet's charge.--Poets the authors of liberty.--Poets the real rulers of mankind.--The world's appreciation of their importance.--Their immortality.
VIII. A SOBER AFTERTHOUGHT
Denial that the views of poets on the poet are heterogeneous.--Poets' identity of purpose in discussing poets.--Apparent contradictions in views.-Apparent inconsistency in the thought of each poet.--The two-fold interests of poets.--The poet as harmonizer of sensual and spiritual.-- Balance of sense and spirit in the poetic temperament.--Injustice to one element or the other in most literary criticism.--Limitations of the poet's prose criticism.--Superiority of his critical expressions in verse.--The poet's importance.--Poetry as a proof of the idealistic philosophy.
INDEX
CHAPTER I.
THE EGOCENTRIC CIRCLE
Most of us, mere men that we are, find ourselves caught in some entanglement of our mortal coil even before we have fairly embarked upon the enterprise of thinking our case through. The art of self-reflection which appeals to us as so eminent and so human, is it after all much more than a vaporous vanity? We name its subject "human nature"; we give it a raiment of timeless generalities; but in the end the show of thought discloses little beyond the obstreperous bit of a "me" which has blown all the fume. The "psychologist's fallacy," or again the "egocentric predicament" of the philosopher of the Absolute, these are but tagged examples of a type of futile self-return (we name it "discovery" to save our faces) which comes more or less to men of all kinds when they take honest-eyed measure of the consequences of their own valuations of themselves. We pose for the portrait; we admire the Lion; but we have only to turn our heads to catch-glimpse Punch with thumb to nose. And then, of course, we mock our own humiliation, which is another kind of vanity; and, having done this penance, pursue again our self-returning fate. The theme is, after all, one we cannot drop; it is the mortal coil.
In the moment of our revulsion from the inevitable return upon itself of the human reason, many of us have clung with the greater desperation to the hope offered by poetry. By the way of intuition poets promise to carry us beyond the boundary of the vicious circle. When the ceaseless round of the real world has come to nauseate us, they assure us that by simply relaxing our hold upon actuality we may escape from the squirrel-cage. By consenting to the prohibition, "Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss!" we may enter the realm of ideality, where our dizzy brains grow steady, and our pulses are calmed, as we gaze upon the quietude of transcendent beauty.
But what are we to say when, on opening almost any book of comparatively recent verse, we find, not the self-forgetfulness attendant upon an ineffable vision, but advertisement of the author's importance? His argument we find running somewhat as follows: "I am superior to you because I write poetry. What do I write poetry about? Why, about my superiority, of course!" Must we not conclude that the poet, with the rest of us, is speeding around the hippodrome of his own self-centered consciousness?
Indeed the poet's circle is likely to appear to us even more viciousthan that of other men. To be sure, we remember Sir Philip Sidney's contention, supported by his anecdote of the loquacious horseman, that men of all callings are equally disposed to vaunt themselves. If the poet seems especially voluble about his merits, this may be owing to the fact that, words being the tools of his trade, he is more apt than other men in giving expression to his self-importance. But our specific objection to the poet is not met by this explanation. Even the horseman does not expect panegyrics of his profession to take the place of horseshoes. The inventor does not issue an autobiography in lieu of a new invention. The public would seem justified in reminding the poet that, having a reasonable amount of curiosity about human nature, it will eagerly devour the poet's biography, properly labeled, but only after he has forgotten himself long enough to write a poem that will prove his genius, and so lend worth to the perusal of his idiosyncratic records, and his judgments on poetic composition.
The first impulse of our revulsion from the self-infatuated poet is to confute him with the potent name of