Chapter VI: The Meaning and Function of Poetry

“Form without substance is a shadow of riches, and all possible cleverness in expression is of no use to him who has nothing to express.”

--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 239.

=The nature of poetry.=--Poetry as the highest and most characteristic form of literature. Bewildering wealth of material in this art and most many-sided relation to the spirit of man. Hence difficulty in defining function.

=Poetry in relation to sculpture and painting.=--Possibility in poetry of expressing definite conceptions for the intellect and imagination. Compare Shelley’s _Ozymandias of Egypt_. What is given in this sonnet: compare a statue. Less immediate portrayal for the vision in poetry. Hence less direct power in appeal to the imagination; but conceptions freed more from sense association. Moreover ideas expressed through a succession of forms in time relation.

Power of poetry to paint a picture: compare Wordsworth’s sonnet _Upon Westminster Bridge_. Contrast in appeal with a painting of the same scene. The ways in which each art has its own superiority. Truth and error in Lessing’s theory of descriptive poetry as developed in _Laokoön_.

=Poetry in relation to music.=--Direct musical appeal in the two sonnets studied. Direct expression of emotion and appeal to emotion in poetry. Compare Shelley’s lyric _To the Night_. Here music dominant, appealing to the emotions, as in _Ozymandias_ thought and imagination appealing to inner vision. How all poetry should be read aloud. Even when read silently, appeal to the ear in music through the imagination. The effect of poetry read aloud in a language the hearer does not know: direct appeal of music in poetry even when the ideas are not given at all. Thus poetry making a direct appeal to the emotions through music, though with less absoluteness than in music and without in any way usurping or replacing the functions of the latter art.

Byron’s stanzas on the sunset hour in _Don Juan_. What they give in natural beauty; association of the human past, of religion and of literature; personal experience. Compare what is given in Millet’s _Angelus_; in a musical composition awakening the same emotions.

=The two types of poetry.=--Poetry that is dominantly musical in appeal. Compare many lyrics of Shelley; Spenser. The description of the dwelling of Morpheus in _The Faery Queen_. Poetry in which the dominant appeal is through imaginative vision. Compare what is most characteristic in Dante and Shakespeare.

=Relation of poetry to human life.=--Poetry combining in a new union the functions of the other arts without replacing them in their own fields. Poetry the most complex and universal of the fine arts in many-sided power to express and interpret all aspects of human experience. Compare in the lyric; the epic; the drama.

Prose literature in relation to poetry. The same functions fulfilled on another plane. The rhythm of prose. The novel as a prose epic and drama set in a lower key.

=The three types of art in relation.=--The different functions of the arts illustrated in great masterpieces. Compare Dante’s _Divine Comedy_ with the _Last Judgment_ of Michael Angelo and a mediæval cathedral, and with a fugue of Bach and a symphony of Beethoven.

Compare Cormon’s _Cain_, Wagner’s music in _The Twilight of the Gods_, and Shakespeare’s _King Lear_.

Compare Watts’ painting of _Francesca and Paolo_, Wagner’s music in _Tristan und Isolde_, and the fifth canto of Dante’s _Inferno_.

=Unity in the arts.=--The spirit of man a unity, hence also the appeal of the arts. In all, thought, emotion and imagination; in all, the same principles of form, of beauty and harmony.

This evident in efforts to combine the arts in a more composite art. Compare the union of poetry and music in song; the union of all types of art in the Wagnerian opera. Inevitable sacrifice of something on the part of each of the arts so combined; peculiar adaptation of the composite art to the modern spirit. The question which art should be central in the composite whole.

=The service of poetry.=--Danger in poetry as in the other arts. Evil of seeking merely sensuous beauty; evil of portraying life to satisfy a morbid and decadent taste. Yet the evil but indicating the correlative power in the true ministration of art to the human spirit.

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity,--I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only an euphemism for folly.”

--Plato, _Republic_, book III, section 400.

“I believed that I might form the theory that every _individual_ branch of art follows out a development of its powers that finally leads it to their limits; and that it cannot pass these limits without the danger of losing itself in the unintelligible and absolutely fantastic--even in the absurd. I thought that I saw in this point the necessity for it to join companionship at this stage with another class of art, related to it, and the only one capable of going on from this position. And as I was of necessity keenly interested (having regard to my own ideal) in following out this tendency in each special kind of art, I finally believed that I could recognize it most distinctly in the relation of poetry to music,--especially considering the remarkable importance modern music has assumed. And as I thus endeavored to imagine that work of art in which all branches of art could unite in their highest perfection, I came as a matter of course to the _conscious_ contemplation of that ideal which had _unconsciously_ gradually formed within me, and had hovered before the seeking artist.”

--Wagner, in “The Music of the Future,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 147.

“If it is true that painting and poetry in their imitations make use of entirely different means or symbols--the first, namely, of form and colour in space, the second of articulated sounds in time--if these symbols indisputably require a suitable relation to the thing symbolized, then it is clear that symbols arranged in juxtaposition can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts exist in juxtaposition; while consecutive symbols can only express subjects of which the wholes or parts are themselves consecutive.

“Subjects whose wholes or parts exist in juxtaposition are called bodies. Consequently, bodies with their visible properties are the peculiar subjects of painting.

“Subjects whose wholes or parts are consecutive are called actions. Consequently, actions are the peculiar subject of poetry.

“Still, all bodies do not exist in space only, but also in time. They endure, and in each moment of their duration may assume a different appearance, or stand in a different combination. Each of these momentary appearances and combinations is the effect of a preceding one, may be the cause of a subsequent, one, and is therefore, as it were, the centre of an action. Consequently, painting too can imitate actions, but only indicatively, by means of bodies.

“On the other hand, actions cannot exist by themselves, they must depend on certain beings. So far, therefore, as these beings are bodies, or are regarded as such, poetry paints bodies, but only indicatively, by means of actions.

“In its coexisting compositions painting can only make use of a single instant of the action, and must therefore choose the one which is most pregnant, and from which what precedes and what follows can be most easily gathered.

“In like manner, poetry, in its progressive imitations, is confined to the use of a single property of bodies, and must therefore choose that which calls up the most sensible image of the body in the aspect in which she makes use of it.”

--Lessing, _Laokoön_, pp. 91, 92.

“As to Homer, it is as if the scales had fallen from my eyes. The descriptions, similes and so on appear to us poetical, and are yet unspeakably natural, though of course drawn with a purity, an inward truth enough to strike us poor moderns dumb. The very strangest fictions are characterised by a naturalness I never felt so much as in the presence of the objects described. To express the antithesis briefly; _they_ presented the thing, _we_ usually present the effect; _they_ described the dreadful, _we_ describe dreadfully; _they_ the agreeable, _we_ agreeably, and so on. This will explain all our extravagance, our affectation, our false grace, our inflation; for once you elaborate and strain after effect, you fancy you can never make it strong enough.”

--Goethe, _Travels in Italy_, p. 322.

“In instruments, the primal organs of creation and nature find their representation; they cannot be sharply determined and defined, for they but repeat primal feelings as they came forth from the chaos of the first creation, when there were perhaps no human beings in existence to receive them in their hearts. With the genius of the human voice it is entirely otherwise; this represents the human heart, and its isolated, individual emotion. Its character is therefore limited, but fixed and defined. Let these two elements be brought together, then; let them be united! Let those wild primal emotions that stretch out into the infinite, that are represented by instruments, be contrasted with the clear, definite emotions of the human heart, represented by the human voice. The addition of the second element will work beneficently and soothingly upon the conflict of the elemental emotions, and give to their course a well-defined and united channel; and the human heart itself, in receiving these elemental emotions, will be immeasurably strengthened and broadened; and made capable of feeling clearly what was before an uncertain presage of the highest ideal, now changed into a divine knowledge.”

--Wagner, in “A Pilgrimage to Beethoven,” _Art Life and Theories_, p. 63.

“I admit that the exercises of the gymnasium form athletic bodies; but beauty is only developed by the free and equal play of the limbs. In the same way the tension of the isolated spiritual forces may make extraordinary men; but it is only the well-tempered equilibrium of these forces that can produce happy and accomplished men.”

--Schiller, _Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical_, p. 43.

“The highest problem of any art is to produce by appearance the illusion of a higher reality. But it is a false endeavour to realize the appearance until at last only something commonly real remains.”

--Goethe, _Autobiography_, Bohn Library translation (George Bell & Sons, London, 1891), vol. 1, p. 422.

TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION

1. What likenesses can you discover between poetry on the one hand and sculpture and painting on the other?

2. What likenesses can you discover between poetry and music?

3. What poets make the strongest appeal through imaginative vision? What poets make the dominant appeal through music?

4. Compare what is given in Shakespeare’s sonnet beginning “That time of year thou mayst in me behold” with a painting of an autumn scene.

5. Compare Shelley’s lyric _To the Night_ with the music of Chopin.

6. Study carefully what is given in Millet’s _Man with the Hoe_ with what is given in Markham’s poem on the same subject.

7. Estimate the value and limitations of Lessing’s theory of the arts as given in _Laokoön_.

8. What elements of content and of form are common to all the arts?

9. Compare in expression of thought, feeling and imagination and in type of appeal, the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the _Last Judgment_ of Michael Angelo and the _Ninth Symphony_ of Beethoven.

10. What powers has poetry that are not present in the other arts?

REFERENCES

Ambros, _Boundaries of Music and Poetry_. Aristotle, _Poetic_. Beeching, _The Study of Poetry_. Bradley, _Poetry for Poetry’s Sake_. Corson, _Aims of Literary Study_. Dabney, _Musical Basis of Verse_. Goethe, _Conversations with Eckermann_; _Maxims and Reflections_. Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_; _Handbook of Poetics_. Gurney, _The Power of Sound_. Holden, _Audiences_. Holmes, _What is Poetry?_ Hugo, _William Shakespeare_. Knight, _The Philosophy of the Beautiful_. Lanier, _Music and Poetry_; _Science of English Verse_. Lessing, _Laokoön_. Moyse, _Poetry as a Fine Art_. Newman, _Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics_. Palgrave, _Golden Treasury_; _Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts_. Plato, _Republic_, books II. and III. Poe, _The Rationale of Verse and The Poetic Principle_. Puffer, _The Psychology of Beauty_, chapters vi.-viii. Raymond, _Poetry as a Representative Art_; _Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music_. Santayana, _Elements and Function of Poetry_. Schiller, _Essays_. Shairp, _Aspects of Poetry_. Shelley, _A Defence of Poetry_. Sidney, _Defense of Poesy_. Stedman, _Nature and Elements of Poetry_. Wagner, _Art Life and Theories of_. Wilde, _The Critic as Artist_. Winchester, _Some Principles of Literary Criticism_.