Aspiring Writers Autumn Edition
2006
The World's Best Poetry
Vol III
SORROW AND CONSOLATION
AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE
By
LYMAN ABBOTT
published 1902
AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE.
BY LYMAN ABBOTT.
Poetry, music, and painting are three correlated arts, connected not
merely by an accidental classification, but by their intrinsic nature.
For they all possess the same essential function, namely, to interpret
the uninterpretable, to reveal the undiscoverable, to express the
inexpressible. They all attempt, in different forms and through
different languages, to translate the invisible and eternal into
sensuous forms, and through sensuous forms to produce in other souls
experiences akin to those in the soul of the translator, be he poet,
musician, or painter. That they are three correlated arts, attempting,
each in its own way and by its own language, to express the same
essential life, is indicated by their co-operation in the musical drama.
This is the principle which Wagner saw so clearly, and has used to such
effective purpose in his so-called operas, whose resemblance to the
Italian operas which preceded them is more superficial than real. In the
drama Wagner wishes you to consider neither the music apart from the
scenery, nor the scenery apart from the acting, nor the three apart from
the poetry. Poetry, music, and art combine with the actor to interpret
truths of life which transcend philosophic definition. Thus in the first
act of "Parsifal," innocence born of ignorance, remorse born of the
experience of temptation and sin, and reverence bred in an atmosphere
not innocent yet free from the experience of great temptation, mingle in
a drama which elevates all hearts, because in some one of these three
phases it touches every heart. And yet certain of the clergy condemned
the presentation as irreverent, because it expresses reverence in a
symbolism to which they were unaccustomed.
But while it is true that these three arts are correlative and
co-operative, they do not duplicate one another. Each not only speaks in
a language of its own, but expresses in that language a life which the
others cannot express. As color and fragrance combine to make the
flower, but the color expresses what the fragrance cannot express, and
the fragrance expresses what the color cannot express, so in the musical
drama, music, poetry, and painting combine, not by duplicating but by
supplementing each other. One may describe in language a symphony; but
no description will produce the effect which the symphony produces. One
may describe a painting; but no description will produce the effect
which the painting will produce. So neither music, nor painting, nor
both combined, can produce the same effect on the soul as poetry. The
"Midsummer Night's Dream" enacted in pantomime, with Mendelssohn's
music, would no more produce the same effect on the auditors which would
be produced by the interpretation of the play in spoken words, than
would the reading of the play at home produce the same effect as the
enacting of the play with what are miscalled the accessories of music
and scenery. The music and scenery are no more accessories to the words
than the words are accessories to the music and scenery. The three
combine in a triple language to express and produce one life, and it can
be expressed and produced in no other way than by the combination of the
three arts in harmonious action. This is the reason why no parlor
readings can ever take the place of the theatre, and no concert
performance can ever take the place of the opera. This is the reason why
all attempts to suppress the theatre and opera are and always will be in
vain. They are attempts to suppress the expression and awakening of a
life which can neither be expressed nor awakened in any other way; and
suppression of life, however successfully it may be accomplished for a
time, is never permanently possible.
These arts do not truly create, they interpret. Man is not a creator, he
is only a discoverer. The imagination is not creative, it is only
reportorial. Ideals are realities; imagination is seeing. The musician,
the artist, the poet, discover life which others have not discovered,
and each with his own instrument interprets that life to those less
sensitive than himself. Observe a musician composing. He writes; stops;
hesitates; meditates; perhaps hums softly to himself; perhaps goes to
the piano and strikes a chord or two. What is he doing? He is trying to
express to himself a beauty which he has heard in the world of infinite
phenomena, and to reproduce it as well as sensuous sounds can reproduce
it, that those with duller hearing than himself may hear it also.
Observe a painter before his easel. He paints; looks to see the effect;
erases; adds; modifies; reexamines; and repeats this operation over and
over again. What is he doing? He is copying a beauty which he has seen
in the invisible world, and which he is attempting to bring out from its
hiding so that the men who have no eyes except for the sensuous may also
see it. In my library is an original sonnet by John G. Whittier. In
almost every line are erasures and interlineations. In some cases the
careful poet has written a new line and pasted it over the rejected one.
What does this mean? It means that he has discovered a truth of moral
beauty and is attempting to interpret his discovery to the world. His
first interpretation of his vision did not suit him, nor his second, nor
his third, and he has revised and re-revised in the attempt to make his
verse a true interpretation of the truth which he had seen. He did not
make the truth; it eternally was. Neither did the musician make the
truth of harmony, nor the painter the truth of form and color. They also
eternally were. Poet, musician, painter, have seen, heard, felt,
realized in their own souls some experience of life, some potent reality
which philosophy cannot formulate, nor creed contain, nor eloquence
define; and each in his own way endeavors to give it to the world of
men; each in his own way endeavors to lift the gauzy curtain,
impenetrable to most souls, which hides the invisible, the inaudible,
the eternal, the divine from men; and he gives them a glimpse of that of
which he himself had but a glimpse.
In one sense and in one only can art be called creative: the artist,
whether he be painter, musician, or poet, so interprets to other men the
experience which has been created in him by his vision of the
supersensible and eternal, that he evokes in them a similar experience.
He is a creator only as he conveys to others the life which has been
created in himself. As the electric wire creates light in the home; as
the band creates the movement in the machinery; thus and only thus does
the artist create life in those that wait upon him. He is in truth an
interpreter and transmitter, not a creator. Nor can he interpret what he
has not first received, nor transmit what he has not first experienced.
The music, the painting, the poem are merely the instruments which he
uses for that purpose. The life must first be in him or the so-called
music, painting, poem are but dead simulacra; imitations of art, not
real art. This is the reason why no mechanical device, be it never so
skillfully contrived, can ever take the place of the living artist. The
pianola can never rival the living performer; nor the orchestrion the
orchestra; nor the chromo the painting. No mechanical device has yet
been invented to produce poetry; even if some shrewd Yankee should
invent a printing machine which would pick out rhymes as some printing
machines seem to pick out letters, the result would not be a poem. This
is the reason too why mere perfection of execution never really
satisfies. "She sings like a bird." Yes! and that is exactly the
difficulty with her. We want one who sings like a woman. The popular
criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound
and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the
orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is
also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best.
He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the
orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted
to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will be a
soulless performance.
Into each of these arts, therefore--music, painting, poetry--enter two
elements: the inner and the outer, the truth and the language, the
reality and the symbol, the life and the expression. Without the
electric current the carbon is a mere blank thread; the electric current
is not luminous if there be no carbon. The life and the form are alike
essential. So the painter must have something to express, but he must
also have skill to express it; the musician must have music in his soul,
but he must also have a power of instrumentation; the poet must feel the
truth, or he is no poet, but he must also have power to express what he
feels in such forms as will create a similar feeling in his readers, or
he is still no poet. Multitudes of women send to the newspapers poetical
effusions which, are not poems. The feeling of the writer is excellent,
but the expression is bad. The writer has seen, but she cannot tell what
she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as
to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of
inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic;
sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise
their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they
seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection
and entreaty for which he has no vocal expression. It is just as
essential that poetical feeling should have poetical expression in order
to constitute poetry as it is that musical feeling should have musical
expression in order to constitute music. And, on the other hand, as
splashes of color without artistic feeling which they interpret are not
art, as musical, sounds without musical feeling which they interpret are
not music, so poetical forms without poetical feeling are not poetry.
Poetical feeling in unpoetical forms may be poetical prose, but it is
still prose. And on the other hand, rhymes, however musical they may be
to the ear, are only rhymes, not poetry, unless they express a true
poetical life.
But these two elements are separable only in thought, not in reality.
Poetry is not common thought expressed in an uncommon manner; it is not
an artificial phrasing of even the higher emotions. The higher emotions
have a phrasing of their own; they fall naturally--whether as the result
of instinct or of habit need not here be considered--into fitting forms.
The form may be rhyme; it may be blank verse; it may be the old Hebrew
parallelism; it may even be the indescribable form which Walt Whitman
has adopted. What is noticeable is the fact that poetical thought, if it
is at its best, always takes on, by a kind of necessity, some poetical
form. To illustrate if not to demonstrate this, it is only necessary to
select from literature any fine piece of poetical expression of a higher
and nobler emotion, or of clear and inspiring vision, and attempt to put
it into prose form. The reader will find, if he be dealing with the
highest poetry, that translating it into prose impairs its power to
express the feeling, and makes the expression not less but more
artificial. If he doubt this statement, let him turn to any of the finer
specimens of verse in this volume and see whether he can express the
life in prose as truly, as naturally, as effectively, as it is there
expressed in rhythmical form.
These various considerations may help to explain why in all ages of the
world the arts have been the handmaidens of religion. Not to amplify
too much, I have confined these considerations to the three arts of
music, painting, and poetry; but they are also applicable to sculpture
and architecture. All are attempts by men of vision to interpret to the
men who are not equally endowed with vision, what the invisible world
about us and within us has for the enrichment of our lives. This is
exactly the function of religion: to enrich human lives by making them
acquainted with the infinite. It is true that at times the arts have
been sensualized, the emphasis has been put on the form of expression,
not on the life expressed; and then reformers, like the Puritans and the
Quakers, have endeavored to exclude the arts from religion, lest they
should contaminate it. But the exclusion has been accomplished with
difficulty, and to maintain it has been impossible. It is neither an
accident, nor a sign of decadence, that painting and sculpture are
creeping back into the Protestant churches, to combine with poetry and
music in expressing the religious life of man. For the intellect alone
is inadequate either to express that life as it exists, or to call it
into existence where it does not exist. The tendency to ritual in our
time is a tendency not to substitute æsthetic for spiritual life, though
there is probably always a danger that such a substitution may be
unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be
expressed without the aid of æsthetic symbols. The work of the intellect
is to analyze and define. But the infinite is in the nature of the case
indefinable, and it is with the infinite religion has to do. All that
theology can hope to accomplish is to define certain provinces in the
illimitable realm of truth; to analyze certain experiences in a life
which transcends all complete analysis. The Church must learn to regard
not with disfavor or suspicion, but with eager acceptance, the
co-operation of the arts in the interpretation of infinite truth and the
expression of infinite life. Certainly we are not to turn our churches
into concert rooms or picture and sculpture galleries, and imagine that
æsthetic enjoyment is synonymous with piety. But as surely we are not to
banish the arts from our churches, and think that we are religious
because we are barren. All language, whether of painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, poetry, or oratory, is legitimately used to express
the divine life, as all the faculties, whether of painter, sculptor,
architect, musician, poet, orator, and philosopher, are to be used in
reaching after a more perfect knowledge of Him who always transcends and
always will transcend our perfect knowing.
Thus the study of poetry is the study of life, because poetry is the
interpretation of life. Poetry is not a mere instrument for promoting
enjoyment; it does not merely dazzle the imagination and excite the
emotions. Through the emotions and the imagination it both interprets
life and ministers to life. When the critic attempts to express that
truth, that is, to interpret the interpreter, which he can do only by
translating the poetry into prose, and the language of imagination and
emotion into that of philosophy, he destroys the poem in the process,
much as the botanist destroys the flower in analyzing it, or the musical
critic the composition in disentangling its interwoven melodies and
explaining the mature of its harmonic structure. The analysis, whether
of music, art, or poetry, must be followed by a synthesis, which, in the
nature of the case, can be accomplished only by the hearer or reader for
himself. All that I can do here is to illustrate this revelatory
character of poetry by some references to the poems which this volume
contains. I do not attempt to explain the meaning of these poems; that
is a task quite impossible. I only attempt to show that they have a
meaning, that beneath their beauty of form is a depth of truth which
philosophical statement in prose cannot interpret, but the essence of
which such statement may serve to suggest. I do not wish to expound the
truth of life which is contained in the poet's verse; I only wish to
show that the poet by his verse reveals a truth of life which the critic
cannot express, and that it is for this reason pre-eminently that such a
collection of poetry as this is deserving of the reader's study.
If for example the student turns to such a volume as Newman Smyth's
"Christian Ethics," he will find there a careful though condensed
discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate,
philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the
man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide
or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his
mind:--the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless,
indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death
carries us, which makes him hesitate. If we would really understand the
mind of the suicide, not merely the mind of the philosopher coolly
debating suicide, we must turn to the poet.
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin! Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."
This first the poet does: he draws aside the veil which hides the
working of men's hearts, and lets us see their hidden life. But he does
more. Not merely does he afford us knowledge, he imparts life. For we
know feeling only by participating in the feeling; and the poet has the
art not merely to describe the experiences of men but so to describe
them that for the moment we share them, and so truly know them by the
only process by which they can be known. Who, for instance, can read
Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" and not, as he reads, stand by the
despairing one as she waits a moment upon the bridge just ready to take
her last leap out of the cruelty of this world into, let us hope, the
mercy of a more merciful world beyond?
"Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,
With many a light
From window and casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood, with amazement,
Homeless by night.
"The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurled--
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world.
"In she plunged boldly--
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran,--
Over the brink of it!
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man!
Lave in it, drink of it,
Then, if you can.
"Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!"
No analysis of philosophy can make us acquainted with the tragedy of
this life as the poet can; no exhortation of preacher can so effectively
arouse in us the spirit of a Christian charity for the despairing
wanderer as the poet.
Would you know the tragedy of a careless and supercilious coquetry which
plays with the heart as the fisherman plays with the salmon? Read "Clara
Vere de Vere." Would you know the dull heartache of a loveless married
life, growing at times into an intolerable anguish which no marital
fidelity can do much to medicate? Read "Auld Robin Gray." Who but a poet
can interpret the pain of a parting between loving hearts, with its
remorseful recollections of the wholly innocent love's joys that are
past?
"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken hearted."
Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drifting apart,
such as has destroyed many a friendship and wrecked many a married life,
as Clough has depicted it in "Qua Cursum Ventus"? If you would know the
life-long sorrow of the blind man at your side, would enter into his
life and for a brief moment share his captivity, read Milton's
interpretation of that sorrow in Samson's Lament. If you would find some
message to cheer the blind man in his darkness and illumine his
captivity, read the same poet's ode on his own blindness:
"God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
No prison statistics, no police reports, no reformer's documents, no
public discussions of the question, What to do with the tramp, will ever
so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of
the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life,
as Béranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no
psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give
the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly
causeless dejection, which because it seems to be causeless seems also
to be well-nigh incurable, as Percy Bysshe Shelley has given in his
"Stanzas written near Naples." No critical expounder of the Stoical
philosophy can interpret the stoical temper which interposes a sullen
but dauntless pride to attacking sorrow as William Ernest Henley has
done:
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed."
Nor can any preacher put in so vital a contrast to this despairing
defiance with which pride challenges sorrow, the joyous victory which a
trusting love wins over it by submitting to it, as John Greenleaf
Whittier has done in "The Eternal Goodness":
"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air:
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
No philosophical treatise can interpret bereavement as the great poets
have interpreted it. The mystery of sorrow, the bewilderment it causes,
the wonder whether there is any God or any good, the silence that is the
only answer to our call for help, the tumult of emotion, the strange
perplexity of mind, the dull despair, the inexplicable paralysis of
feeling, intermingling in one wholly inconsistent and incongruous
experience: where, in all the literature of Philosophy can we find such
an exposition and echo and interpretation of this experience as in that
great Hebrew epic--the Book of Job? And where in all the literature of
Philosophy can we find such interpreters of the two great comforters of
the soul, faith and hope, as one finds in the poets? They do not argue;
they simply sing. And, as a note struck upon one of a chime of bells
will set the neighboring bell vibrating, so the strong note of faith and
hope sounded by the poet, sets a like note vibrating in the mourner's
heart. The mystery is not solved, but the silence is broken. First we
listen to the poet, then we listen to the same song sung in our own
hearts,--the same, for it is God who has sung to him and who sings to
us. And when the bereaved has found God, he has found light in his
darkness, peace in his tempest, a ray in his night.
"As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood forevermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleep the faster that he wept before."
The visitor to the island of Catalina, off the coast of California, is
invited to go out in a glass-bottomed boat upon the sea. If he accepts
the invitation and looks about him with careless curiosity, he will
enjoy the blue of the summer sky and ocean wave, and the architectural
beauty of the island hills; but if he turns his gaze downward and looks
through the glass bottom of the boat in which he is sailing, he will
discover manifold phases of beauty in the life beneath the sea waves: in
goldfish darting hither and thither, in umbrella-shaped jellyfish lazily
swimming by, in starfish and anemones of infinite variety, in
sea-urchins brilliant in color, and in an endless forest of water-weeds
exquisitely delicate in their structure. Perhaps he will try to
photograph them; but in vain: his camera will render him no report of
the wealth of life which he has seen. So he who takes up such a volume
of poetry as this will find ample repayment in the successive pictures
which it presents to his imagination, and the transient emotions which
it will excite in him. But besides this there is a secret life which the
careless reader will fail to see, and which the critic cannot report,
but which will be revealed to the thoughtful, patient, meditative
student. In this power to reveal an otherwise unknown world, lies the
true glory of poetry. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the
poet has to say to him.
[Signature: Lyman Abbot]
BY LYMAN ABBOTT.
Poetry, music, and painting are three correlated arts, connected not
merely by an accidental classification, but by their intrinsic nature.
For they all possess the same essential function, namely, to interpret
the uninterpretable, to reveal the undiscoverable, to express the
inexpressible. They all attempt, in different forms and through
different languages, to translate the invisible and eternal into
sensuous forms, and through sensuous forms to produce in other souls
experiences akin to those in the soul of the translator, be he poet,
musician, or painter. That they are three correlated arts, attempting,
each in its own way and by its own language, to express the same
essential life, is indicated by their co-operation in the musical drama.
This is the principle which Wagner saw so clearly, and has used to such
effective purpose in his so-called operas, whose resemblance to the
Italian operas which preceded them is more superficial than real. In the
drama Wagner wishes you to consider neither the music apart from the
scenery, nor the scenery apart from the acting, nor the three apart from
the poetry. Poetry, music, and art combine with the actor to interpret
truths of life which transcend philosophic definition. Thus in the first
act of "Parsifal," innocence born of ignorance, remorse born of the
experience of temptation and sin, and reverence bred in an atmosphere
not innocent yet free from the experience of great temptation, mingle in
a drama which elevates all hearts, because in some one of these three
phases it touches every heart. And yet certain of the clergy condemned
the presentation as irreverent, because it expresses reverence in a
symbolism to which they were unaccustomed.
But while it is true that these three arts are correlative and
co-operative, they do not duplicate one another. Each not only speaks in
a language of its own, but expresses in that language a life which the
others cannot express. As color and fragrance combine to make the
flower, but the color expresses what the fragrance cannot express, and
the fragrance expresses what the color cannot express, so in the musical
drama, music, poetry, and painting combine, not by duplicating but by
supplementing each other. One may describe in language a symphony; but
no description will produce the effect which the symphony produces. One
may describe a painting; but no description will produce the effect
which the painting will produce. So neither music, nor painting, nor
both combined, can produce the same effect on the soul as poetry. The
"Midsummer Night's Dream" enacted in pantomime, with Mendelssohn's
music, would no more produce the same effect on the auditors which would
be produced by the interpretation of the play in spoken words, than
would the reading of the play at home produce the same effect as the
enacting of the play with what are miscalled the accessories of music
and scenery. The music and scenery are no more accessories to the words
than the words are accessories to the music and scenery. The three
combine in a triple language to express and produce one life, and it can
be expressed and produced in no other way than by the combination of the
three arts in harmonious action. This is the reason why no parlor
readings can ever take the place of the theatre, and no concert
performance can ever take the place of the opera. This is the reason why
all attempts to suppress the theatre and opera are and always will be in
vain. They are attempts to suppress the expression and awakening of a
life which can neither be expressed nor awakened in any other way; and
suppression of life, however successfully it may be accomplished for a
time, is never permanently possible.
These arts do not truly create, they interpret. Man is not a creator, he
is only a discoverer. The imagination is not creative, it is only
reportorial. Ideals are realities; imagination is seeing. The musician,
the artist, the poet, discover life which others have not discovered,
and each with his own instrument interprets that life to those less
sensitive than himself. Observe a musician composing. He writes; stops;
hesitates; meditates; perhaps hums softly to himself; perhaps goes to
the piano and strikes a chord or two. What is he doing? He is trying to
express to himself a beauty which he has heard in the world of infinite
phenomena, and to reproduce it as well as sensuous sounds can reproduce
it, that those with duller hearing than himself may hear it also.
Observe a painter before his easel. He paints; looks to see the effect;
erases; adds; modifies; reexamines; and repeats this operation over and
over again. What is he doing? He is copying a beauty which he has seen
in the invisible world, and which he is attempting to bring out from its
hiding so that the men who have no eyes except for the sensuous may also
see it. In my library is an original sonnet by John G. Whittier. In
almost every line are erasures and interlineations. In some cases the
careful poet has written a new line and pasted it over the rejected one.
What does this mean? It means that he has discovered a truth of moral
beauty and is attempting to interpret his discovery to the world. His
first interpretation of his vision did not suit him, nor his second, nor
his third, and he has revised and re-revised in the attempt to make his
verse a true interpretation of the truth which he had seen. He did not
make the truth; it eternally was. Neither did the musician make the
truth of harmony, nor the painter the truth of form and color. They also
eternally were. Poet, musician, painter, have seen, heard, felt,
realized in their own souls some experience of life, some potent reality
which philosophy cannot formulate, nor creed contain, nor eloquence
define; and each in his own way endeavors to give it to the world of
men; each in his own way endeavors to lift the gauzy curtain,
impenetrable to most souls, which hides the invisible, the inaudible,
the eternal, the divine from men; and he gives them a glimpse of that of
which he himself had but a glimpse.
In one sense and in one only can art be called creative: the artist,
whether he be painter, musician, or poet, so interprets to other men the
experience which has been created in him by his vision of the
supersensible and eternal, that he evokes in them a similar experience.
He is a creator only as he conveys to others the life which has been
created in himself. As the electric wire creates light in the home; as
the band creates the movement in the machinery; thus and only thus does
the artist create life in those that wait upon him. He is in truth an
interpreter and transmitter, not a creator. Nor can he interpret what he
has not first received, nor transmit what he has not first experienced.
The music, the painting, the poem are merely the instruments which he
uses for that purpose. The life must first be in him or the so-called
music, painting, poem are but dead simulacra; imitations of art, not
real art. This is the reason why no mechanical device, be it never so
skillfully contrived, can ever take the place of the living artist. The
pianola can never rival the living performer; nor the orchestrion the
orchestra; nor the chromo the painting. No mechanical device has yet
been invented to produce poetry; even if some shrewd Yankee should
invent a printing machine which would pick out rhymes as some printing
machines seem to pick out letters, the result would not be a poem. This
is the reason too why mere perfection of execution never really
satisfies. "She sings like a bird." Yes! and that is exactly the
difficulty with her. We want one who sings like a woman. The popular
criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound
and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the
orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is
also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best.
He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the
orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted
to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will be a
soulless performance.
Into each of these arts, therefore--music, painting, poetry--enter two
elements: the inner and the outer, the truth and the language, the
reality and the symbol, the life and the expression. Without the
electric current the carbon is a mere blank thread; the electric current
is not luminous if there be no carbon. The life and the form are alike
essential. So the painter must have something to express, but he must
also have skill to express it; the musician must have music in his soul,
but he must also have a power of instrumentation; the poet must feel the
truth, or he is no poet, but he must also have power to express what he
feels in such forms as will create a similar feeling in his readers, or
he is still no poet. Multitudes of women send to the newspapers poetical
effusions which, are not poems. The feeling of the writer is excellent,
but the expression is bad. The writer has seen, but she cannot tell what
she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as
to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of
inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic;
sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise
their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they
seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection
and entreaty for which he has no vocal expression. It is just as
essential that poetical feeling should have poetical expression in order
to constitute poetry as it is that musical feeling should have musical
expression in order to constitute music. And, on the other hand, as
splashes of color without artistic feeling which they interpret are not
art, as musical, sounds without musical feeling which they interpret are
not music, so poetical forms without poetical feeling are not poetry.
Poetical feeling in unpoetical forms may be poetical prose, but it is
still prose. And on the other hand, rhymes, however musical they may be
to the ear, are only rhymes, not poetry, unless they express a true
poetical life.
But these two elements are separable only in thought, not in reality.
Poetry is not common thought expressed in an uncommon manner; it is not
an artificial phrasing of even the higher emotions. The higher emotions
have a phrasing of their own; they fall naturally--whether as the result
of instinct or of habit need not here be considered--into fitting forms.
The form may be rhyme; it may be blank verse; it may be the old Hebrew
parallelism; it may even be the indescribable form which Walt Whitman
has adopted. What is noticeable is the fact that poetical thought, if it
is at its best, always takes on, by a kind of necessity, some poetical
form. To illustrate if not to demonstrate this, it is only necessary to
select from literature any fine piece of poetical expression of a higher
and nobler emotion, or of clear and inspiring vision, and attempt to put
it into prose form. The reader will find, if he be dealing with the
highest poetry, that translating it into prose impairs its power to
express the feeling, and makes the expression not less but more
artificial. If he doubt this statement, let him turn to any of the finer
specimens of verse in this volume and see whether he can express the
life in prose as truly, as naturally, as effectively, as it is there
expressed in rhythmical form.
These various considerations may help to explain why in all ages of the
world the arts have been the handmaidens of religion. Not to amplify
too much, I have confined these considerations to the three arts of
music, painting, and poetry; but they are also applicable to sculpture
and architecture. All are attempts by men of vision to interpret to the
men who are not equally endowed with vision, what the invisible world
about us and within us has for the enrichment of our lives. This is
exactly the function of religion: to enrich human lives by making them
acquainted with the infinite. It is true that at times the arts have
been sensualized, the emphasis has been put on the form of expression,
not on the life expressed; and then reformers, like the Puritans and the
Quakers, have endeavored to exclude the arts from religion, lest they
should contaminate it. But the exclusion has been accomplished with
difficulty, and to maintain it has been impossible. It is neither an
accident, nor a sign of decadence, that painting and sculpture are
creeping back into the Protestant churches, to combine with poetry and
music in expressing the religious life of man. For the intellect alone
is inadequate either to express that life as it exists, or to call it
into existence where it does not exist. The tendency to ritual in our
time is a tendency not to substitute æsthetic for spiritual life, though
there is probably always a danger that such a substitution may be
unconsciously made, but to express a religious life which cannot be
expressed without the aid of æsthetic symbols. The work of the intellect
is to analyze and define. But the infinite is in the nature of the case
indefinable, and it is with the infinite religion has to do. All that
theology can hope to accomplish is to define certain provinces in the
illimitable realm of truth; to analyze certain experiences in a life
which transcends all complete analysis. The Church must learn to regard
not with disfavor or suspicion, but with eager acceptance, the
co-operation of the arts in the interpretation of infinite truth and the
expression of infinite life. Certainly we are not to turn our churches
into concert rooms or picture and sculpture galleries, and imagine that
æsthetic enjoyment is synonymous with piety. But as surely we are not to
banish the arts from our churches, and think that we are religious
because we are barren. All language, whether of painting, sculpture,
architecture, music, poetry, or oratory, is legitimately used to express
the divine life, as all the faculties, whether of painter, sculptor,
architect, musician, poet, orator, and philosopher, are to be used in
reaching after a more perfect knowledge of Him who always transcends and
always will transcend our perfect knowing.
Thus the study of poetry is the study of life, because poetry is the
interpretation of life. Poetry is not a mere instrument for promoting
enjoyment; it does not merely dazzle the imagination and excite the
emotions. Through the emotions and the imagination it both interprets
life and ministers to life. When the critic attempts to express that
truth, that is, to interpret the interpreter, which he can do only by
translating the poetry into prose, and the language of imagination and
emotion into that of philosophy, he destroys the poem in the process,
much as the botanist destroys the flower in analyzing it, or the musical
critic the composition in disentangling its interwoven melodies and
explaining the mature of its harmonic structure. The analysis, whether
of music, art, or poetry, must be followed by a synthesis, which, in the
nature of the case, can be accomplished only by the hearer or reader for
himself. All that I can do here is to illustrate this revelatory
character of poetry by some references to the poems which this volume
contains. I do not attempt to explain the meaning of these poems; that
is a task quite impossible. I only attempt to show that they have a
meaning, that beneath their beauty of form is a depth of truth which
philosophical statement in prose cannot interpret, but the essence of
which such statement may serve to suggest. I do not wish to expound the
truth of life which is contained in the poet's verse; I only wish to
show that the poet by his verse reveals a truth of life which the critic
cannot express, and that it is for this reason pre-eminently that such a
collection of poetry as this is deserving of the reader's study.
If for example the student turns to such a volume as Newman Smyth's
"Christian Ethics," he will find there a careful though condensed
discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate,
philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the
man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide
or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his
mind:--the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless,
indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death
carries us, which makes him hesitate. If we would really understand the
mind of the suicide, not merely the mind of the philosopher coolly
debating suicide, we must turn to the poet.
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin! Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action."
This first the poet does: he draws aside the veil which hides the
working of men's hearts, and lets us see their hidden life. But he does
more. Not merely does he afford us knowledge, he imparts life. For we
know feeling only by participating in the feeling; and the poet has the
art not merely to describe the experiences of men but so to describe
them that for the moment we share them, and so truly know them by the
only process by which they can be known. Who, for instance, can read
Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" and not, as he reads, stand by the
despairing one as she waits a moment upon the bridge just ready to take
her last leap out of the cruelty of this world into, let us hope, the
mercy of a more merciful world beyond?
"Where the lamps quiver
So far in the river,
With many a light
From window and casement,
From garret to basement,
She stood, with amazement,
Homeless by night.
"The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery
Swift to be hurled--
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world.
"In she plunged boldly--
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran,--
Over the brink of it!
Picture it--think of it,
Dissolute man!
Lave in it, drink of it,
Then, if you can.
"Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!"
No analysis of philosophy can make us acquainted with the tragedy of
this life as the poet can; no exhortation of preacher can so effectively
arouse in us the spirit of a Christian charity for the despairing
wanderer as the poet.
Would you know the tragedy of a careless and supercilious coquetry which
plays with the heart as the fisherman plays with the salmon? Read "Clara
Vere de Vere." Would you know the dull heartache of a loveless married
life, growing at times into an intolerable anguish which no marital
fidelity can do much to medicate? Read "Auld Robin Gray." Who but a poet
can interpret the pain of a parting between loving hearts, with its
remorseful recollections of the wholly innocent love's joys that are
past?
"Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met--or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken hearted."
Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drifting apart,
such as has destroyed many a friendship and wrecked many a married life,
as Clough has depicted it in "Qua Cursum Ventus"? If you would know the
life-long sorrow of the blind man at your side, would enter into his
life and for a brief moment share his captivity, read Milton's
interpretation of that sorrow in Samson's Lament. If you would find some
message to cheer the blind man in his darkness and illumine his
captivity, read the same poet's ode on his own blindness:
"God doth not need
Either man's work, or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best: his state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."
No prison statistics, no police reports, no reformer's documents, no
public discussions of the question, What to do with the tramp, will ever
so make the student of life participant of the innermost experience of
the tramp, his experience of dull despair, his loss of his grip on life,
as Béranger's "The Old Vagabond." No expert in nervous diseases, no
psychological student of mental states, normal and abnormal, can give
the reader so clear an understanding of that deep and seemingly
causeless dejection, which because it seems to be causeless seems also
to be well-nigh incurable, as Percy Bysshe Shelley has given in his
"Stanzas written near Naples." No critical expounder of the Stoical
philosophy can interpret the stoical temper which interposes a sullen
but dauntless pride to attacking sorrow as William Ernest Henley has
done:
"Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
"In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed."
Nor can any preacher put in so vital a contrast to this despairing
defiance with which pride challenges sorrow, the joyous victory which a
trusting love wins over it by submitting to it, as John Greenleaf
Whittier has done in "The Eternal Goodness":
"I know not what the future hath
Of marvel or surprise,
Assured alone that life and death
His mercy underlies.
"I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air:
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care."
No philosophical treatise can interpret bereavement as the great poets
have interpreted it. The mystery of sorrow, the bewilderment it causes,
the wonder whether there is any God or any good, the silence that is the
only answer to our call for help, the tumult of emotion, the strange
perplexity of mind, the dull despair, the inexplicable paralysis of
feeling, intermingling in one wholly inconsistent and incongruous
experience: where, in all the literature of Philosophy can we find such
an exposition and echo and interpretation of this experience as in that
great Hebrew epic--the Book of Job? And where in all the literature of
Philosophy can we find such interpreters of the two great comforters of
the soul, faith and hope, as one finds in the poets? They do not argue;
they simply sing. And, as a note struck upon one of a chime of bells
will set the neighboring bell vibrating, so the strong note of faith and
hope sounded by the poet, sets a like note vibrating in the mourner's
heart. The mystery is not solved, but the silence is broken. First we
listen to the poet, then we listen to the same song sung in our own
hearts,--the same, for it is God who has sung to him and who sings to
us. And when the bereaved has found God, he has found light in his
darkness, peace in his tempest, a ray in his night.
"As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood forevermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleep the faster that he wept before."
The visitor to the island of Catalina, off the coast of California, is
invited to go out in a glass-bottomed boat upon the sea. If he accepts
the invitation and looks about him with careless curiosity, he will
enjoy the blue of the summer sky and ocean wave, and the architectural
beauty of the island hills; but if he turns his gaze downward and looks
through the glass bottom of the boat in which he is sailing, he will
discover manifold phases of beauty in the life beneath the sea waves: in
goldfish darting hither and thither, in umbrella-shaped jellyfish lazily
swimming by, in starfish and anemones of infinite variety, in
sea-urchins brilliant in color, and in an endless forest of water-weeds
exquisitely delicate in their structure. Perhaps he will try to
photograph them; but in vain: his camera will render him no report of
the wealth of life which he has seen. So he who takes up such a volume
of poetry as this will find ample repayment in the successive pictures
which it presents to his imagination, and the transient emotions which
it will excite in him. But besides this there is a secret life which the
careless reader will fail to see, and which the critic cannot report,
but which will be revealed to the thoughtful, patient, meditative
student. In this power to reveal an otherwise unknown world, lies the
true glory of poetry. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the
poet has to say to him.
[Signature: Lyman Abbot]
Aspiring Writers Magazine is owned and
operated by Lavenia Ann Claman
All Rights Reserved 2006
operated by Lavenia Ann Claman
All Rights Reserved 2006
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