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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/32477-8.txt b/32477-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bfeed46 --- /dev/null +++ b/32477-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1172 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Future of English Poetry, by Edmund Gosse + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Future of English Poetry + + +Author: Edmund Gosse + + + +Release Date: May 22, 2010 [eBook #32477] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY*** + + +E-text prepared by Meredith Bach and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/futureofenglishp00gossuoft + + + + + +The English Association + +Pamphlet No. 25 + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY + +by + +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + +June, 1913 + + + + + + +A copy of this pamphlet is supplied to all full members of the +Association. They can obtain further copies (price 1_s._) on application +to the Secretary, Mr. A. V. Houghton, Imperial College Union, South +Kensington, London, S.W. + + + + +The English Association + +Pamphlet No. 25 + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY + +by + +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + +June, 1913 + + + + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY + + J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or, + Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor, + Verdoyant à jamais, hier comme aujourd'hui, + Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit. + + HENRI DE RÉGNIER. + + +In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen to +those whose positive authority is universally recognized, and in taking +for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its definitions or +consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I perform what you +may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy audacity. My subject is +chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures which you may well believe +yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to propound. Nevertheless, and +in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite you to join with me in some +reflections on what is the probable course of English poetry during, let +us say, the next hundred years. If I happen to be right, I hope some of +the youngest persons present will say, when I am long turned to dust, what +an illuminating prophet I was. If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will +remember anything at all about the matter. In any case we may possibly be +rewarded this afternoon by some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation +of some pleasant analogies. + +Our title takes for granted that English poetry[1] will continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as an +art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which is +fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and another, +in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in the history +of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of writing verse +was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three Scandinavian +countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no poetry, in our +sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost died out here in +England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran very low in France +at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these instances, whether ancient or +modern, of the attempt to prove prose a sufficing medium for all +expression of human thought have hitherto failed, and it is now almost +certain that they will more and more languidly be revived, and with less +and less conviction. + + [1] I here use the word 'Poetry' (as Wordsworth did) as opposed to + the word 'Prose', and synonymous with metrical composition. + +It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his 'Epistle to the Reverend Divines' +(1574) that 'It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not only +permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing'. Poetry has +occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and you will +remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his philosophical Utopia, +was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical verse himself. So, to come +down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry out of the living language of +his country, had been one of the most skilful of prosodical proficients. +Such instances may allay our alarm. There cannot be any lasting force in +arguments which remind us of the pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. +It needs more than the zeal of a turncoat to drive Apollo out of +Parnassus. + +There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of it? +There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious water-colour +painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It is very +fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, the horse +of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his wings, against +a sky so dark that it must symbolize the obscure discourse of those who +write in prose. You are left quite doubtful whether he will strike the +rocky terrace in the foreground with his slender, silver hooves, or will +swoop down into the valley below, or will soar to heaven and out of sight. +You are left by the painter in a pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may +break out anywhere, and of the vivacious courser himself all that we can +be sure of is that we are certain to see him alighting before us when we +least expect him. + +We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his apparently +aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical spirit, and yet +acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of believing that verse +will continue to be written in the English language for a quite indefinite +period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of these difficulties at +once. The principal danger, then, to the future of poetry seems to me to +rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. Every school of verse is +a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because its leaders have become +capable of new forms of attractive expression; its crest is some writer, +or several writers, of genius, who combine skill and fire and luck at a +moment of extreme opportuneness; and then the wave breaks, because later +writers cannot support the ecstasy, and only repeat formulas which have +lost their attractiveness. Shirley would have been a portent, if he had +flourished in 1595 and had written then as he did in 1645. Erasmus Darwin +would be one of the miracles of prosody if 'The Loves of the Plants' could +be dated 1689 instead of 1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this +rise and fall in value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the +trough of the last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. +_Cantate Domino_ is the cry of youth, sing a _new_ song unto the Lord. + +But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray's +'Elegy', and much of 'Hamlet', and some of Burns's songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are like +rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the script +of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who wish to +speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In several of the +literatures of modern Europe--those which began late, or struggled long +against great disadvantages--it is still possible to produce pleasure by +poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly limpid language. But +with us in England, I confess that it seems to me certain that whatever we +retain, we can never any more have patience to listen to a new shepherd +piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation is likely to be more +acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire for novelty of +expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which is so fervently +demanded from every new school of writers, will force the poets of the +future to sweep away all recognized impressions. The consequence must be, +I think,--I confess so far as language is concerned that I see no escape +from this,--that the natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our +speech will be driven from our national poetry, as they are even now so +generally being driven. + +No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. The +poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that 'Qui saura penser de +lui-même et former de nobles idées, qu'il prenne, s'il peut, la manière +et le tour élevé des maîtres'. These are words which should inspire every +new aspirant to the laurel. 'S'il peut'; you see that Vauvenargues puts it +so, because he does not wish that we should think that such victories as +these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce them. They are +not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the rubbed-out, +conventionalized coinage of our language. + +In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples, and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has recently +been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular poets, has +never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am debarred by what +Keats called 'giant ignorance' from expressing an opinion on the subject, +but I presume that in Welsh the resources of language are far from being +so seriously exhausted as we have seen that they are in our own +complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the higher forms of +poetic diction through five centuries has made simple expression extremely +difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in Welsh, as in Gaelic and +in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of lyric, epic, and dramatic art +untilled. We have seen, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, +Provençal poets capable of producing simple and thrilling numbers which +are out of the reach of their sophisticated brethren who employ the worn +locutions of the French language. + +In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not any +longer satisfy to write + + The rose is red, the violet blue, + And both are sweet, and so are you. + +Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were so +still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is quite +impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will seek to +analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their _naïvetés_ lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school. + +We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that Pegasus, +with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue to +accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will only be +at the cost of much that we at present admire and like that the continuity +of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly present to you +some characteristic passages of the best English poetry of 1963, I doubt +extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of their merits. I am +not sure that you would understand what the poet intended to convey, any +more than the Earl of Surrey would have understood the satires of Donne, +or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of George Meredith. Young minds +invariably display their vitality by attacking the accepted forms of +expression, and then they look about for novelties, which they cultivate +with what seems to their elders to be extravagance. Before we attempt to +form an idea, however shadowy, of what poetry will be in the future, we +must disabuse ourselves of the delusion that it will be a repetition of +what is now produced and accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of +philosophy to do away with the embarrassing and painful, but after all +perhaps healthful antagonism between those who look forward and those who +live in the past. The earnestness expended on new work will always render +young men incapable of doing justice to what is a very little older than +themselves; and the piety with which the elderly regard what gave them +full satisfaction in their days of emotional freshness will always make it +difficult for them to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what +they loved. + +If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in our +vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must follow +on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find the +modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing symbolic +subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are still +unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That is to +say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had been said +before him, and in his horror of the trite and the superficial, he will +achieve effect and attach interest _obscuris vera involvens_--wrapping the +truth in darkness. The 'darkness' will be relative, as his own +contemporaries, being more instructed and sophisticated than we are, will +find those things transparent, or at least translucent, which remain +opaque enough to us. And, of course, as epithets and adjectives that seem +fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn to him, he will have to exert his +ingenuity to find parallel expressions which would startle us by their +oddity if we met with them now. + +A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognized +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never fail +to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We may +instructively examine the history of literature with special attention to +this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. It was fatal +to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in an obscurity to +which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given from the name of +its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several highly-gifted +writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who endeavoured to give +freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I need only remind you +of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril Tourneur, called _The +Transform'd Metamorphosis_, and of the cryptic rhymed dramas of Lord +Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think desperately perilous to +a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable Stéphane Mallarmé. Nothing, +I feel, is more dangerous to the health of poetry than the praise given by +a group of irresponsible disciples to verse which transfers commonplace +thought to an exaggerated, violent, and involved scheme of diction, and I +confess that I should regard the future of poetry in this country with +much more apprehension than I do, if I believed that the purely learned +poet, the prosodical pedant, was destined to become paramount amongst us. +That would, indeed, threaten the permanence of the art; and it is for that +reason that I look with a certain measure of alarm on the excess of +verbiage about poetry which attends not merely criticism, which matters +little, but the actual production and creation. I am confident, however, +that the common sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in +favour of sanity and lucidity. + +One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what the +French call 'la vraie hauteur'. This elevation of style, this dignity, is +foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the rude air of +modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe saw it degenerate for a +century and a half, into pomposity relieved by flatness. It is apt to +become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of empty fine phrases. If +we examine the serious poetry of the end of the seventeenth and the +greater part of the eighteenth century,--especially in the other countries +of Europe, for England was never without some dew on the +threshing-floor,--if we examine it in France, for instance, between Racine +and André Chénier, we are obliged to recognize that it was very rarely +both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, which we are beginning +ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to poetry the sense of a +genuine stateliness of expression, which once more gave it the requisite +dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and the noble sentiments of +humanity. + +Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the subjects +with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. Here we are +confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of history, we see +that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed by the incursions +of a more and more powerful and wide-embracing prose. At the dawn of +civilization poetry had it all its own way. If instruction was desired +upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, the bard produced it in a +prosodical shape, combining with the dignity of form the aid which the +memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus you conceive of a Hesiod +before you think of a Homer, and the earliest poetry was probably of a +purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, with its exact pedestrian +method, took over more and more completely the whole province of +information, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the last +strongholds of the poetry of instruction were stormed. I will, if you +please, bring this home to you by an example which may surprise you. + +The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But it +was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a hundred +years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable passage in +which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of 1800: + + If the labours of men of science,--Wordsworth said,--should ever + create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, + and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will + sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the + steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general indirect + effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the + midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries + of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper + objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if + the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, + and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers + of these respective sciences, thus familiarized to men, shall be + ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will + lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome + the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the + household of man. + +It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same spirit +as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to assure us +of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of one so +sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. The belief +of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, in some +vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But when we +look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our national +poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany or +chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an effort +made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. Perhaps the +nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable was attempted by +Tennyson, particularly in those parts of _In Memoriam_ where he dragged in +analogies to geological discoveries and the biological theories of his +time. Well, these are just those parts of Tennyson which are now most +universally repudiated as lifeless and jejune. + +Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would 'bind +together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it +is spread over the whole earth, and over all time'. I suppose that in +composing those huge works, so full of scattered beauties, but in their +entirety so dry and solid, 'The Excursion' and 'The Prelude', he was +consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme of a wide and +all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts of this kind +will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in whom the +memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the imagination, +employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social poetry the elements +of which, _prima facie_, should be deeply attractive to us all. But I do +not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, brilliant as they +are, are calculated to encourage the poets of the future to pursue their +lyric celebration of machinery and sociology and the mysteries of natural +religion. Already is it not that portion of his work which we approach +with most languor, in spite of its originality and its outlook upon 'the +vast empire of human society'? And lesser poets than he who seek for +popularity by such violent means are not, I think, rewarded by the +distinguished loyalty of the best readers. We are startled by their +novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but when, a few years later, +we return to them, we are apt to observe with distress how + + their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. + +If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater prophets, +my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy of future +poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid social +character, but that as civilization more and more tightly lays hold upon +literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one province after +another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more and more what +Hazlitt calls 'a mere effusion of natural sensibility'. Hazlitt used the +phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and not shrink from +adopting it. In most public remarks about current and coming literature in +the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which it is taken for +granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers of the imagination +is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to embrace the world, to +take part in a universal scheme of pacification, to immortalize imperial +events, to be as public as possible. But surely it is more and more +clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for such grandiose themes +as these. Within the last year our minds have been galvanized into +collective sympathy by two great sensations of catastrophe, each case +wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can take in the revolt of +nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I suppose we may consider +the destruction of the _Titanic_ and the loss of Captain Scott's +expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is thought by +journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common consent, +these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to any really +remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody could equal in +vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These are matters in +which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose does not +require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. The impact +of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and forcible. + +My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming poets +will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should define it +as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which are of +collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the intense +cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical observation +of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the future poet. I +will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of his principal +preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery piece of +mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of me alike. +The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn writers of the +imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is the only safeguard +against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But although the ivory +tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although the poets may be +strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_ there, it should not +be the year-long habitation of any healthy intelligence. + +I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an 'effusion of natural +sensibility', will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be tempted, +in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to draw +farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap his +singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat his +readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our successors +must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not merely sees +nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I am not +concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; the +moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that this +unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on the +positive value of his verse. + +The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries,--it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the misanthropy +of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the rowdiness of +Marlowe?--the higher the note of the lyre, the more ridiculous is the +attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds the violence of +Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with a greater pride +than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude of the sacred bard, +maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and hollowed out and made +haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will have to be abandoned as +a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it is preserved by the poets +of the future it will be peculiar to those monasteries of song, those +'little clans', of which I am now about to speak as likely more and more +to prevail. + +In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of these +bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is perhaps +instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de Creteil, which +was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was founded in October +1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal dissensions in +January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance of the public, in +contemptuous disregard of established 'literary opinion', a sort of +prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be the active centre of +energy for a new generation, and there were five founders, each of whom +was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in verse. At Creteil there was +a printing-press in a great park, so that the members should be altogether +independent of the outside world. The poets were to cultivate the garden +and keep house with the sale of the produce. When not at work, there were +recitations, discussions, exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up +with the latest vagaries of the Cubists and Post-impressionists. + +This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one among +the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any measure of +talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in vague and +nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call charlatans, the +refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider that it is +interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a sense correct +when they announced that they were performing 'a heroic act', an act +symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future disdainfully +protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the dreadful impact +of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you wish to pursue the +subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your eye on this tendency to +a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed much evidence of it yet in +England, but it is beginning to stir a good deal in France and Italy. +After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious thing, like the practices of +the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was said, 'Our House of the Holy +Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should have looked upon it, is yet +doomed to remain untouched, imperturbable, out of sight, and unrevealed to +the whole godless world for ever.' If I am sure of anything, it is that +the Poets of the Future will look upon massive schemes of universal +technical education, and such democratic reforms as those which are now +occupying the enthusiasm and energy of our friend the Lord Chancellor, as +peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a godless world. + +To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me very likely +that sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical +poetry of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort of +obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other phenomenon +worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with the various +tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was the mark of the +sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and craftily exhibited, +but often, as in foreign examples which will easily occur to your memory, +rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a slightly stale perfume, an +irritating odour of last night's opopanax or vervain. And this is the one +point, almost I think the only point, in which the rather absurd and +certainly very noisy and hoydenish manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, +led by M. Marinetti and his crew of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious +attention. It is a plank in their platform, you know, to banish eroticism, +of the good kind and of the bad, from the practice of the future. I do +not, to say the truth, find much help for the inquiry we have taken up +to-day, in the manifestoes of these raucous young gentlemen, who, when +they have succeeded in flinging the ruins of the leprous palaces of +Venice into its small stinking canals, will find themselves hard put to it +to build anything beautiful in the place of them. But in their reaction +against 'the eternal feminine', they may, I think, very possibly be +followed by the serious poets of the future. + +Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry in +England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in the +direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is known as +pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to listening audiences +behind the footlights, but in the increased study of life in its +exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with the tendency, +of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world itself, either into +an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered association of more or +less independent figures united only in a rebellious and contemptuous +disdain of public opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one +solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all +companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the +ignorance,--really, the happy and hieratic ignorance,--of what 'people', +in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help +the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the +surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth +of human character. Hence, I think it not improbable that the poetry of +the future may become more and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series +of acts of definite creation, rather than as the result of observation, +which will be left to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant +masters of our prose. + +As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for mankind +than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an excessive +observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate to the +violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general exaggeration of the +darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of what was called the +'sub-fuse' colours which art-critics of a century ago judged essential to +sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, and particularly in the +very latest Russian drama, this determination to see blackness and +blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of existence as a Valley of +the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully frequent. In England we had a +poet of considerable power, whose tragic figure crossed me in my youth, in +whose work there is not a single gleam of hope or dignity for man;--I mean +the unfortunate James Thompson, author of 'The City of Dreadful Night'. I +cannot but believe that the poetry of the future, being more deeply +instructed, will insist less emphatically upon human failure and less +savagely upon the revolt of man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an +earnestness, a fullness of tribute to the noble passion of life, an +utterance simple and direct. I believe that it will take as its theme the +magnificence of the spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not +the grotesque and squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat. + +Your chairman has admirably said, in one of his charming essays, that +'History may be abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be +purely formal; but poetry must be full of human life'. This consideration, +I think, may make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance +of poetic expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever +changes may be introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may +occur in religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification +of composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action possible +as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the hopes and fears, +of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic imagination will be +found to insist on expression in the mode of formal art. It is quite +possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of the democratic +instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such as was presented +in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank verse lyrics in 'The +Princess', by Browning in the more brilliant parts of 'One Word More', by +Swinburne in his fulminating 'Sapphics', may be as little repeated as the +analogous hardness of Dryden in 'MacFlecknoe' or the lapidary splendour of +Gray in his 'Odes'. I should rather look, at least in the immediate +future, to a revival of the liquid ease of Chaucer or the soft +redundancies of 'The Faëry Queen'. The remarkable experiments of the +Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon the whole body of +French verse, lead me to expect a continuous movement in that direction. + +It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal--perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognized their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of it +in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, which at +once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or imminent +service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of poetry is +not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and only +partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will consider +it, all that the Symbolists have been saying is involved in Bacon's phrase +that 'poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires of the soul, +instead of subjecting the soul to external things'. + +There could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up +with a rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that +which I have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope +that you will not think that your time has been wasted while we have +touched, lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the +probable or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, +or I, or the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn +poets, we may be certain that there will + + hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue + +of ours can 'digest'. I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on any +expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest our only +sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable arrival, +ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon as ever +they bubble from the blow of his hoof. + +EDMUND GOSSE. + + + + +OXFORD: HORACE HART + +PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + +The following Publications have been issued by the Association, and those +still in print can be purchased by members:-- + +1907-12. + +1. Types of English Curricula in Boys' Secondary Schools. (Out of print.) +Price 6d. + +2. The Teaching of Shakespeare in Secondary Schools (Provisional +suggestions). (Out of print.) Price 1d. + +3. A Short List of Books on English Literature from the beginning to 1832, +for the use of Teachers. Price 6d. (to Associate Members, 1s.) + +4. Shelley's View of Poetry. By A. C. Bradley, Litt.D. (Out of print.) +Price 1s. + +5. English Literature in Secondary Schools. By J. H. Fowler, M.A. Price +6d. + +6. The Teaching of English in Girls' Secondary Schools. By Miss G. +Clement, B.A. (Out of print.) Price 6d. + +7. The Teaching of Shakespeare in Schools. Price 6d. + +8. Types of English Curricula in Girls' Secondary Schools. (Out of print.) +Price 6d. + +9. Milton and Party. By Professor O. Elton, M.A. (Out of print.) Price 6d. + +10. Romance. By W. P. Ker. Price 6d. + +11. What still remains to be done for the Scottish Dialects. By W. Grant. +Price 6d. + +12. Summary of Examinations in English affecting Schools. Price 6d. + +13. The Impersonal Aspect of Shakespeare's Art. By Sidney Lee, D.Litt. +Price 1s. + +14. Early Stages in the Teaching of English. (Out of print.) Price 6d. + +15. A Shakespeare Reference Library. By Sidney Lee, D.Litt. Price 1s. + +16. The Bearing of English Studies upon the National Life. By C. H. +Herford, Litt.D. Price 1s. + +17. 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Clarendon Press. 2s. 6d. to members. + +Contents:--What English Poetry may still learn from Greek, by Gilbert +Murray; Some Childish Things, by A. A. Jack; _A Lover's Complaint_, by J. +W. Mackail; Arnold and Homer, by T. S. Omond; Keats's Epithets, by David +Watson Rannie; Dante and the Grand Style, by George Saintsbury; Blake's +Religious Lyrics, by H. C. Beeching. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY*** + + +******* This file should be named 32477-8.txt or 32477-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/4/7/32477 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Future of English Poetry</p> +<p>Author: Edmund Gosse</p> +<p>Release Date: May 22, 2010 [eBook #32477]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY***</p> +<p> </p> +<h4>E-text prepared by Meredith Bach<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/c/">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries<br /> + (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/toronto">http://www.archive.org/details/toronto</a>)</h4> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;" cellpadding="10"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/futureofenglishp00gossuoft"> + http://www.archive.org/details/futureofenglishp00gossuoft</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h2>THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION</h2> +<h4>Pamphlet No. 25</h4> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h2>The Future of English Poetry</h2> +<p> </p> +<h4>By</h4> +<h3>Edmund Gosse, C.B.</h3> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h4>June, 1913</h4> + + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="note">A copy of this pamphlet is supplied to all full members of the +Association. They can obtain further copies (price 1<i>s.</i>) on application +to the Secretary, Mr. A. V. Houghton, Imperial College Union, South +Kensington, London, S.W.</p> +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> + + +<h2>THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION</h2> +<h4>Pamphlet No. 25</h4> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h2>The Future of English Poetry</h2> +<p> </p> +<h4>By</h4> +<h3>Edmund Gosse, C.B.</h3> +<p> </p><p> </p> +<h4>June, 1913</h4> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="poem header"> +<tr><td>J’ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d’or,<br /> +Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor,<br /> +Verdoyant à jamais, hier comme aujourd’hui,<br /> +Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><span class="smcap">Henri de Régnier.</span></span></td></tr></table> + +<p>In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen to +those whose positive authority is universally recognized, and in taking +for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its definitions or +consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I perform what you +may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy audacity. My subject is +chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures which you may well believe +yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to propound. Nevertheless, and +in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite you to join with me in some +reflections on what is the probable course of English poetry during, let +us say, the next hundred years. If I happen to be right, I hope some of +the youngest persons present will say, when I am long turned to dust, what +an illuminating prophet I was. If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will +remember anything at all about the matter. In any case we may possibly be +rewarded this afternoon by some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation +of some pleasant analogies.</p> + +<p>Our title takes for granted that English poetry<small><a name="f1.1" id="f1.1" href="#f1">[1]</a></small> will continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as an +art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which is +fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and another, +in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in the history +of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of writing verse +was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three Scandinavian +countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no poetry, in our +sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost died out here in +England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran very low in France +at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these instances, whether ancient or +modern, of the attempt to prove prose a sufficing medium<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> for all +expression of human thought have hitherto failed, and it is now almost +certain that they will more and more languidly be revived, and with less +and less conviction.</p> + +<p>It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his ‘Epistle to the Reverend Divines’ +(1574) that ‘It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not only +permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing’. Poetry has +occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and you will +remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his philosophical Utopia, +was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical verse himself. So, to come +down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry out of the living language of +his country, had been one of the most skilful of prosodical proficients. +Such instances may allay our alarm. There cannot be any lasting force in +arguments which remind us of the pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. +It needs more than the zeal of a turncoat to drive Apollo out of +Parnassus.</p> + +<p>There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of it? +There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious water-colour +painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It is very +fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, the horse +of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his wings, against +a sky so dark that it must symbolize the obscure discourse of those who +write in prose. You are left quite doubtful whether he will strike the +rocky terrace in the foreground with his slender, silver hooves, or will +swoop down into the valley below, or will soar to heaven and out of sight. +You are left by the painter in a pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may +break out anywhere, and of the vivacious courser himself all that we can +be sure of is that we are certain to see him alighting before us when we +least expect him.</p> + +<p>We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his apparently +aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical spirit, and yet +acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of believing that verse +will continue to be written in the English language for a quite indefinite +period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of these difficulties at +once. The principal danger, then, to the future of poetry seems to me to +rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. Every school of verse is +a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because its leaders have become +capable of new forms of attractive expression; its crest is some writer, +or several writers, of genius,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> who combine skill and fire and luck at a +moment of extreme opportuneness; and then the wave breaks, because later +writers cannot support the ecstasy, and only repeat formulas which have +lost their attractiveness. Shirley would have been a portent, if he had +flourished in 1595 and had written then as he did in 1645. Erasmus Darwin +would be one of the miracles of prosody if ‘The Loves of the Plants’ could +be dated 1689 instead of 1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this +rise and fall in value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the +trough of the last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. +<i>Cantate Domino</i> is the cry of youth, sing a <i>new</i> song unto the Lord.</p> + +<p>But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray’s +‘Elegy’, and much of ‘Hamlet’, and some of Burns’s songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are like +rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the script +of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who wish to +speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In several of the +literatures of modern Europe—those which began late, or struggled long +against great disadvantages—it is still possible to produce pleasure by +poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly limpid language. But +with us in England, I confess that it seems to me certain that whatever we +retain, we can never any more have patience to listen to a new shepherd +piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation is likely to be more +acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire for novelty of +expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which is so fervently +demanded from every new school of writers, will force the poets of the +future to sweep away all recognized impressions. The consequence must be, +I think,—I confess so far as language is concerned that I see no escape +from this,—that the natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our +speech will be driven from our national poetry, as they are even now so +generally being driven.</p> + +<p>No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. The +poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that ‘Qui saura penser de +lui-même et former de nobles idées, qu’il prenne,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> s’il peut, la manière +et le tour élevé des maîtres’. These are words which should inspire every +new aspirant to the laurel. ‘S’il peut’; you see that Vauvenargues puts it +so, because he does not wish that we should think that such victories as +these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce them. They are +not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the rubbed-out, +conventionalized coinage of our language.</p> + +<p>In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples, and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has recently +been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular poets, has +never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am debarred by what +Keats called ‘giant ignorance’ from expressing an opinion on the subject, +but I presume that in Welsh the resources of language are far from being +so seriously exhausted as we have seen that they are in our own +complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the higher forms of +poetic diction through five centuries has made simple expression extremely +difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in Welsh, as in Gaelic and +in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of lyric, epic, and dramatic art +untilled. We have seen, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, +Provençal poets capable of producing simple and thrilling numbers which +are out of the reach of their sophisticated brethren who employ the worn +locutions of the French language.</p> + +<p>In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not any +longer satisfy to write</p> + +<p class="poem">The rose is red, the violet blue,<br /> +And both are sweet, and so are you.</p> + +<p>Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were so +still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is quite +impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will seek to +analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their <i>naïvetés</i> lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that Pegasus, +with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue to +accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will only be +at the cost of much that we at present admire and like that the continuity +of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly present to you +some characteristic passages of the best English poetry of 1963, I doubt +extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of their merits. I am +not sure that you would understand what the poet intended to convey, any +more than the Earl of Surrey would have understood the satires of Donne, +or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of George Meredith. Young minds +invariably display their vitality by attacking the accepted forms of +expression, and then they look about for novelties, which they cultivate +with what seems to their elders to be extravagance. Before we attempt to +form an idea, however shadowy, of what poetry will be in the future, we +must disabuse ourselves of the delusion that it will be a repetition of +what is now produced and accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of +philosophy to do away with the embarrassing and painful, but after all +perhaps healthful antagonism between those who look forward and those who +live in the past. The earnestness expended on new work will always render +young men incapable of doing justice to what is a very little older than +themselves; and the piety with which the elderly regard what gave them +full satisfaction in their days of emotional freshness will always make it +difficult for them to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what +they loved.</p> + +<p>If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in our +vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must follow +on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find the +modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing symbolic +subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are still +unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That is to +say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had been said +before him, and in his horror of the trite and the superficial, he will +achieve effect and attach interest <i>obscuris vera involvens</i>—wrapping the +truth in darkness. The ‘darkness’ will be relative, as his own +contemporaries, being more instructed and sophisticated than we are, will +find those things transparent, or at least translucent, which remain +opaque enough to us. And, of course, as epithets and adjectives that seem +fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn to him, he will have to exert his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> +ingenuity to find parallel expressions which would startle us by their +oddity if we met with them now.</p> + +<p>A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognized +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never fail +to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We may +instructively examine the history of literature with special attention to +this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. It was fatal +to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in an obscurity to +which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given from the name of +its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several highly-gifted +writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who endeavoured to give +freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I need only remind you +of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril Tourneur, called <i>The +Transform’d Metamorphosis</i>, and of the cryptic rhymed dramas of Lord +Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think desperately perilous to +a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable Stéphane Mallarmé. Nothing, +I feel, is more dangerous to the health of poetry than the praise given by +a group of irresponsible disciples to verse which transfers commonplace +thought to an exaggerated, violent, and involved scheme of diction, and I +confess that I should regard the future of poetry in this country with +much more apprehension than I do, if I believed that the purely learned +poet, the prosodical pedant, was destined to become paramount amongst us. +That would, indeed, threaten the permanence of the art; and it is for that +reason that I look with a certain measure of alarm on the excess of +verbiage about poetry which attends not merely criticism, which matters +little, but the actual production and creation. I am confident, however, +that the common sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in +favour of sanity and lucidity.</p> + +<p>One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what the +French call ‘la vraie hauteur’. This elevation of style, this dignity, is +foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the rude air of +modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> saw it degenerate for a +century and a half, into pomposity relieved by flatness. It is apt to +become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of empty fine phrases. If +we examine the serious poetry of the end of the seventeenth and the +greater part of the eighteenth century,—especially in the other countries +of Europe, for England was never without some dew on the +threshing-floor,—if we examine it in France, for instance, between Racine +and André Chénier, we are obliged to recognize that it was very rarely +both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, which we are beginning +ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to poetry the sense of a +genuine stateliness of expression, which once more gave it the requisite +dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and the noble sentiments of +humanity.</p> + +<p>Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the subjects +with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. Here we are +confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of history, we see +that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed by the incursions +of a more and more powerful and wide-embracing prose. At the dawn of +civilization poetry had it all its own way. If instruction was desired +upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, the bard produced it in a +prosodical shape, combining with the dignity of form the aid which the +memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus you conceive of a Hesiod +before you think of a Homer, and the earliest poetry was probably of a +purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, with its exact pedestrian +method, took over more and more completely the whole province of +information, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the last +strongholds of the poetry of instruction were stormed. I will, if you +please, bring this home to you by an example which may surprise you.</p> + +<p>The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But it +was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a hundred +years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable passage in +which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of 1800:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>If the labours of men of science,—Wordsworth said,—should ever +create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, +and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will +sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the +steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general indirect +effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the +midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries +of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper +objects of the Poet’s art as any upon which it can be employed, if +the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, +and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers +of these respective sciences, thus familiarized to men, shall be +ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will +lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome +the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the +household of man.</p></div> + +<p>It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same spirit +as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to assure us +of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of one so +sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. The belief +of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, in some +vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But when we +look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our national +poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany or +chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an effort +made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. Perhaps the +nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable was attempted by +Tennyson, particularly in those parts of <i>In Memoriam</i> where he dragged in +analogies to geological discoveries and the biological theories of his +time. Well, these are just those parts of Tennyson which are now most +universally repudiated as lifeless and jejune.</p> + +<p>Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would ‘bind +together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it +is spread over the whole earth, and over all time’. I suppose that in +composing those huge works, so full of scattered beauties, but in their +entirety so dry and solid, ‘The Excursion’ and ‘The Prelude’, he was +consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme of a wide and +all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts of this kind +will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in whom the +memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the imagination, +employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social poetry the elements +of which,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> <i>prima facie</i>, should be deeply attractive to us all. But I do +not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, brilliant as they +are, are calculated to encourage the poets of the future to pursue their +lyric celebration of machinery and sociology and the mysteries of natural +religion. Already is it not that portion of his work which we approach +with most languor, in spite of its originality and its outlook upon ‘the +vast empire of human society’? And lesser poets than he who seek for +popularity by such violent means are not, I think, rewarded by the +distinguished loyalty of the best readers. We are startled by their +novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but when, a few years later, +we return to them, we are apt to observe with distress how</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3.75em;">their lean and flashy songs</span><br /> +Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw.</p> + +<p>If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater prophets, +my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy of future +poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid social +character, but that as civilization more and more tightly lays hold upon +literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one province after +another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more and more what +Hazlitt calls ‘a mere effusion of natural sensibility’. Hazlitt used the +phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and not shrink from +adopting it. In most public remarks about current and coming literature in +the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which it is taken for +granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers of the imagination +is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to embrace the world, to +take part in a universal scheme of pacification, to immortalize imperial +events, to be as public as possible. But surely it is more and more +clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for such grandiose themes +as these. Within the last year our minds have been galvanized into +collective sympathy by two great sensations of catastrophe, each case +wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can take in the revolt of +nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I suppose we may consider +the destruction of the <i>Titanic</i> and the loss of Captain Scott’s +expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is thought by +journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common consent, +these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to any really +remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody could equal in +vibrating passion Captain Scott’s last testament. These are matters in +which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose does not +require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. The impact +of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and forcible.</p> + +<p>My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming poets +will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should define it +as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which are of +collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the intense +cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical observation +of one’s self, should become the sole preoccupation of the future poet. I +will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of his principal +preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery piece of +mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of me alike. +The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn writers of the +imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is the only safeguard +against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But although the ivory +tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although the poets may be +strongly recommended to prolong their <i>villeggiatura</i> there, it should not +be the year-long habitation of any healthy intelligence.</p> + +<p>I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an ‘effusion of natural +sensibility’, will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be tempted, +in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to draw +farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap his +singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat his +readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our successors +must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not merely sees +nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I am not +concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; the +moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that this +unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on the +positive value of his verse.</p> + +<p>The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries,—it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world’s standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the misanthropy +of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the rowdiness of +Marlowe?—the higher the note of the lyre, the more ridiculous is the +attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds the violence of +Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with a greater pride +than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude of the sacred bard, +maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and hollowed out and made +haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will have to be abandoned as +a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it is preserved by the poets +of the future it will be peculiar to those monasteries of song, those +‘little clans’, of which I am now about to speak as likely more and more +to prevail.</p> + +<p>In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of these +bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is perhaps +instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de Creteil, which +was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was founded in October +1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal dissensions in +January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance of the public, in +contemptuous disregard of established ‘literary opinion’, a sort of +prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be the active centre of +energy for a new generation, and there were five founders, each of whom +was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in verse. At Creteil there was +a printing-press in a great park, so that the members should be altogether +independent of the outside world. The poets were to cultivate the garden +and keep house with the sale of the produce. When not at work, there were +recitations, discussions, exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up +with the latest vagaries of the Cubists and Post-impressionists.</p> + +<p>This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one among +the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any measure of +talent in proportion to his daring. They were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> involved in vague and +nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call charlatans, the +refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider that it is +interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a sense correct +when they announced that they were performing ‘a heroic act’, an act +symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future disdainfully +protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the dreadful impact +of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you wish to pursue the +subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your eye on this tendency to +a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed much evidence of it yet in +England, but it is beginning to stir a good deal in France and Italy. +After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious thing, like the practices of +the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was said, ‘Our House of the Holy +Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should have looked upon it, is yet +doomed to remain untouched, imperturbable, out of sight, and unrevealed to +the whole godless world for ever.’ If I am sure of anything, it is that +the Poets of the Future will look upon massive schemes of universal +technical education, and such democratic reforms as those which are now +occupying the enthusiasm and energy of our friend the Lord Chancellor, as +peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a godless world.</p> + +<p>To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me very likely +that sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical +poetry of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort of +obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other phenomenon +worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with the various +tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was the mark of the +sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and craftily exhibited, +but often, as in foreign examples which will easily occur to your memory, +rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a slightly stale perfume, an +irritating odour of last night’s opopanax or vervain. And this is the one +point, almost I think the only point, in which the rather absurd and +certainly very noisy and hoydenish manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, +led by M. Marinetti and his crew of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious +attention. It is a plank in their platform, you know, to banish eroticism, +of the good kind and of the bad, from the practice of the future. I do +not, to say the truth, find much help for the inquiry we have taken up +to-day, in the manifestoes of these raucous young gentlemen, who, when +they have succeeded in flinging the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> ruins of the leprous palaces of +Venice into its small stinking canals, will find themselves hard put to it +to build anything beautiful in the place of them. But in their reaction +against ‘the eternal feminine’, they may, I think, very possibly be +followed by the serious poets of the future.</p> + +<p>Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry in +England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in the +direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is known as +pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to listening audiences +behind the footlights, but in the increased study of life in its +exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with the tendency, +of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world itself, either into +an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered association of more or +less independent figures united only in a rebellious and contemptuous +disdain of public opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one +solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all +companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the +ignorance,—really, the happy and hieratic ignorance,—of what ‘people’, +in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help +the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the +surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth +of human character. Hence, I think it not improbable that the poetry of +the future may become more and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series +of acts of definite creation, rather than as the result of observation, +which will be left to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant +masters of our prose.</p> + +<p>As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for mankind +than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an excessive +observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate to the +violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general exaggeration of the +darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of what was called the +‘sub-fuse’ colours which art-critics of a century ago judged essential to +sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, and particularly in the +very latest Russian drama, this determination to see blackness and +blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of existence as a Valley of +the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully frequent. In England we had a +poet of considerable power, whose tragic figure crossed me in my youth, in +whose work there is not a single gleam of hope or dignity for man;—I mean +the unfortunate James Thompson, author of ‘The City of Dreadful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> Night’. I +cannot but believe that the poetry of the future, being more deeply +instructed, will insist less emphatically upon human failure and less +savagely upon the revolt of man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an +earnestness, a fullness of tribute to the noble passion of life, an +utterance simple and direct. I believe that it will take as its theme the +magnificence of the spectacle of Man’s successful fight with Nature, not +the grotesque and squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat.</p> + +<p>Your chairman has admirably said, in one of his charming essays, that +‘History may be abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be +purely formal; but poetry must be full of human life’. This consideration, +I think, may make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance +of poetic expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever +changes may be introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may +occur in religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification +of composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action possible +as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the hopes and fears, +of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic imagination will be +found to insist on expression in the mode of formal art. It is quite +possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of the democratic +instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such as was presented +in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank verse lyrics in ‘The +Princess’, by Browning in the more brilliant parts of ‘One Word More’, by +Swinburne in his fulminating ‘Sapphics’, may be as little repeated as the +analogous hardness of Dryden in ‘MacFlecknoe’ or the lapidary splendour of +Gray in his ‘Odes’. I should rather look, at least in the immediate +future, to a revival of the liquid ease of Chaucer or the soft +redundancies of ‘The Faëry Queen’. The remarkable experiments of the +Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon the whole body of +French verse, lead me to expect a continuous movement in that direction.</p> + +<p>It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal—perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognized their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of it +in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, which at +once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or imminent +service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of poetry is +not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and only +partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will consider +it, all that the Symbolists have been saying is involved in Bacon’s phrase +that ‘poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires of the soul, +instead of subjecting the soul to external things’.</p> + +<p>There could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up +with a rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that +which I have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope +that you will not think that your time has been wasted while we have +touched, lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the +probable or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, +or I, or the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn +poets, we may be certain that there will</p> + +<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">hover in their restless heads</span><br /> +One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least,<br /> +Which into words no virtue</p> + +<p>of ours can ‘digest’. I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on any +expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest our only +sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable arrival, +ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon as ever +they bubble from the blow of his hoof.</p> + +<p class="right">EDMUND GOSSE.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<p class="center">OXFORD: HORACE HART</p> +<p class="center">PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><b>Footnote:</b></p> +<p><a name="f1" id="f1" href="#f1.1">[1]</a> I here use the word ‘Poetry’ (as Wordsworth did) as opposed to +the word ‘Prose’, and synonymous with metrical composition.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p class="hang">The following Publications have been issued by the Association, and those +still in print can be purchased by members:—</p> + +<p class="center">1907-12.</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="publications"> +<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td>Types of English Curricula in Boys’ Secondary Schools.</td><td align="right">(Out of print.) 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Vol. III. +Collected by W. P. Ker. Clarendon Press. 2s. 6d. to members.<br /> +<br /> +Contents:—What English Poetry may still learn from Greek, by Gilbert +Murray; Some Childish Things, by A. A. Jack; <i>A Lover’s Complaint</i>, by J. +W. Mackail; Arnold and Homer, by T. S. Omond; Keats’s Epithets, by David +Watson Rannie; Dante and the Grand Style, by George Saintsbury; Blake’s +Religious Lyrics, by H. C. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Future of English Poetry + + +Author: Edmund Gosse + + + +Release Date: May 22, 2010 [eBook #32477] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY*** + + +E-text prepared by Meredith Bach and the Project Gutenberg Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images +generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/futureofenglishp00gossuoft + + + + + +The English Association + +Pamphlet No. 25 + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY + +by + +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + +June, 1913 + + + + + + +A copy of this pamphlet is supplied to all full members of the +Association. They can obtain further copies (price 1_s._) on application +to the Secretary, Mr. A. V. Houghton, Imperial College Union, South +Kensington, London, S.W. + + + + +The English Association + +Pamphlet No. 25 + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY + +by + +EDMUND GOSSE, C.B. + +June, 1913 + + + + +THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY + + J'ai vu le cheval rose ouvrir ses ailes d'or, + Et, flairant le laurier que je tenais encor, + Verdoyant a jamais, hier comme aujourd'hui, + Se cabrer vers le Jour et ruer vers la Nuit. + + HENRI DE REGNIER. + + +In venturing this afternoon to address an audience accustomed to listen to +those whose positive authority is universally recognized, and in taking +for my theme a subject not, like theirs, distinct in its definitions or +consecrated by tradition and history, I am aware that I perform what you +may, if you choose, call an act of blameworthy audacity. My subject is +chimerical, vague, and founded on conjectures which you may well believe +yourselves at least as well fitted as I am to propound. Nevertheless, and +in no rash or paradoxical spirit, I invite you to join with me in some +reflections on what is the probable course of English poetry during, let +us say, the next hundred years. If I happen to be right, I hope some of +the youngest persons present will say, when I am long turned to dust, what +an illuminating prophet I was. If I happen to be wrong, why, no one will +remember anything at all about the matter. In any case we may possibly be +rewarded this afternoon by some agreeable hopes and by the contemplation +of some pleasant analogies. + +Our title takes for granted that English poetry[1] will continue, with +whatever fluctuations, to be a living and abiding thing. This I must +suppose that you all accede to, and that you do not look upon poetry as an +art which is finished, or the harvest of classic verse as one which is +fully reaped and garnered. That has been believed at one time and another, +in various parts of the globe. I will mention one instance in the history +of our own time: a quarter of a century ago, the practice of writing verse +was deliberately abandoned in the literatures of the three Scandinavian +countries, but particularly in that of Norway, where no poetry, in our +sense, was written from about 1873 to 1885. It almost died out here in +England in the middle of the fifteenth century; it ran very low in France +at the end of the Middle Ages. But all these instances, whether ancient or +modern, of the attempt to prove prose a sufficing medium for all +expression of human thought have hitherto failed, and it is now almost +certain that they will more and more languidly be revived, and with less +and less conviction. + + [1] I here use the word 'Poetry' (as Wordsworth did) as opposed to + the word 'Prose', and synonymous with metrical composition. + +It was at one of the deadliest moments in the life of the art in England +that George Gascoigne remarked, in his 'Epistle to the Reverend Divines' +(1574) that 'It seemeth unto me that in all ages Poetry hath been not only +permitted, but also it hath been thought a right good thing'. Poetry has +occupied the purest and the fieriest minds in all ages, and you will +remember that Plato, who excluded the poets from his philosophical Utopia, +was nevertheless an exquisite writer of lyrical verse himself. So, to come +down to our own day, Ibsen, who drove poetry out of the living language of +his country, had been one of the most skilful of prosodical proficients. +Such instances may allay our alarm. There cannot be any lasting force in +arguments which remind us of the pious confessions of a redeemed burglar. +It needs more than the zeal of a turncoat to drive Apollo out of +Parnassus. + +There will, therefore, we may be sure, continue to be English poetry +written and printed. Can we form any idea of the probable character of it? +There exists, in private hands, a picture by that ingenious water-colour +painter of the late eighteenth century, William Gilpin. It is very +fantastic, and means what you like, but it represents Pegasus, the horse +of the Muses, careering in air on the vast white arc of his wings, against +a sky so dark that it must symbolize the obscure discourse of those who +write in prose. You are left quite doubtful whether he will strike the +rocky terrace in the foreground with his slender, silver hooves, or will +swoop down into the valley below, or will soar to heaven and out of sight. +You are left by the painter in a pleasant uncertainty, but Hippocrene may +break out anywhere, and of the vivacious courser himself all that we can +be sure of is that we are certain to see him alighting before us when we +least expect him. + +We may put our trust in the persistence of Pegasus through his apparently +aimless gyrations, and in the elasticity of the poetical spirit, and yet +acknowledge that there are difficulties in the way of believing that verse +will continue to be written in the English language for a quite indefinite +period. Perhaps we may as well face one or two of these difficulties at +once. The principal danger, then, to the future of poetry seems to me to +rest in the necessity of freshness of expression. Every school of verse is +a rising and a breaking wave. It rises, because its leaders have become +capable of new forms of attractive expression; its crest is some writer, +or several writers, of genius, who combine skill and fire and luck at a +moment of extreme opportuneness; and then the wave breaks, because later +writers cannot support the ecstasy, and only repeat formulas which have +lost their attractiveness. Shirley would have been a portent, if he had +flourished in 1595 and had written then as he did in 1645. Erasmus Darwin +would be one of the miracles of prosody if 'The Loves of the Plants' could +be dated 1689 instead of 1789. There must always be this fluctuation, this +rise and fall in value, and what starts each new wave mounting out of the +trough of the last is the instinctive demand for freshness of expression. +_Cantate Domino_ is the cry of youth, sing a _new_ song unto the Lord. + +But with the superabundant circulation of language year after year, week +after week, by a myriad careful scribes, the possibilities of freshness +grow rarer and rarer. The obvious, simple, poignant things seem to have +all been said. It is not merely that the actual poems, like Gray's +'Elegy', and much of 'Hamlet', and some of Burns's songs, have been +manipulated so often, and put to such pedestrian uses, that they are like +rubbed coins, and begin to lose the very features of Apollo and the script +of the Muses, but that the road seems closed to future bards who wish to +speak with simplicity of similar straightforward things. In several of the +literatures of modern Europe--those which began late, or struggled long +against great disadvantages--it is still possible to produce pleasure by +poems which describe primitive emotions in perfectly limpid language. But +with us in England, I confess that it seems to me certain that whatever we +retain, we can never any more have patience to listen to a new shepherd +piping under the hawthorn-tree. Each generation is likely to be more +acutely preoccupied than the last with the desire for novelty of +expression. Accordingly, the sense of originality, which is so fervently +demanded from every new school of writers, will force the poets of the +future to sweep away all recognized impressions. The consequence must be, +I think,--I confess so far as language is concerned that I see no escape +from this,--that the natural uses of English and the obvious forms of our +speech will be driven from our national poetry, as they are even now so +generally being driven. + +No doubt, in this condition, the originality of those who do contrive to +write strongly and clearly will be more vigorously evident than ever. The +poets will have to gird up their loins and take their sword in their +hands. That wise man of the eighteenth century, to whom we never apply +without some illuminating response, recommends that 'Qui saura penser de +lui-meme et former de nobles idees, qu'il prenne, s'il peut, la maniere +et le tour eleve des maitres'. These are words which should inspire every +new aspirant to the laurel. 'S'il peut'; you see that Vauvenargues puts it +so, because he does not wish that we should think that such victories as +these are easy, or that any one else can help us to produce them. They are +not easy, and they will be made more and more hard by the rubbed-out, +conventionalized coinage of our language. + +In this matter I think it probable that the little peoples, and the +provinces which cultivate a national speech, will long find a great +facility in expressing themselves in verse. I observe that it has recently +been stated that Wales, which has always teemed with vernacular poets, has +never possessed so many as she does at this time. I am debarred by what +Keats called 'giant ignorance' from expressing an opinion on the subject, +but I presume that in Welsh the resources of language are far from being +so seriously exhausted as we have seen that they are in our own +complicated sphere, where the cultivation of all the higher forms of +poetic diction through five centuries has made simple expression extremely +difficult. I am therefore ready to believe that in Welsh, as in Gaelic and +in Erse, the poets have still wide fields of lyric, epic, and dramatic art +untilled. We have seen, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, +Provencal poets capable of producing simple and thrilling numbers which +are out of the reach of their sophisticated brethren who employ the worn +locutions of the French language. + +In new generations there is likely, we may be sure, to occur less +description of plain material objects, because the aspect of these has +already received every obvious tribute. So also there can hardly fail to +be less precise enumeration of the primitive natural emotions, because +this also has been done already, and repeated to satiety. It will not any +longer satisfy to write + + The rose is red, the violet blue, + And both are sweet, and so are you. + +Reflections of this order were once felt to be exquisite, and they were so +still as lately as when Blake and Wordsworth were young. But it is quite +impossible that we should ever go back to them. Future poets will seek to +analyse the redness of the rose, and will scout, as a fallacious +observation, the statement that the violet is blue. All schemes of art +become mechanical and insipid, and even their _naivetes_ lose their +savour. Verse of excellent quality, in this primitive manner, can now be +written to order by any smart little boy in a Grammar-school. + +We have agreed, however, to believe that poetry, as an art, in one shape +or another, will escape from the bankruptcy of language, and that Pegasus, +with whatever strange and unexpected gambollings, will continue to +accompany us. But of one thing we may be quite sure, that it will only be +at the cost of much that we at present admire and like that the continuity +of the art of verse will be preserved. If I could suddenly present to you +some characteristic passages of the best English poetry of 1963, I doubt +extremely whether I should be able to persuade you of their merits. I am +not sure that you would understand what the poet intended to convey, any +more than the Earl of Surrey would have understood the satires of Donne, +or Coleridge have enjoyed the odes of George Meredith. Young minds +invariably display their vitality by attacking the accepted forms of +expression, and then they look about for novelties, which they cultivate +with what seems to their elders to be extravagance. Before we attempt to +form an idea, however shadowy, of what poetry will be in the future, we +must disabuse ourselves of the delusion that it will be a repetition of +what is now produced and accepted. Nor can we hope by any exercise of +philosophy to do away with the embarrassing and painful, but after all +perhaps healthful antagonism between those who look forward and those who +live in the past. The earnestness expended on new work will always render +young men incapable of doing justice to what is a very little older than +themselves; and the piety with which the elderly regard what gave them +full satisfaction in their days of emotional freshness will always make it +difficult for them to be just to what seems built on the ruins of what +they loved. + +If there is any feature which we can scarcely be wrong in detecting in our +vision of the poetry of the future it is an elaboration which must follow +on the need for novelty of which I have spoken. I expect to find the +modern poet accepting more or less consciously an ever-increasing symbolic +subtlety of expression. If we could read his verses, which are still +unwritten, I feel sure that we should consider them obscure. That is to +say, we should find that in his anxiety not to repeat what had been said +before him, and in his horror of the trite and the superficial, he will +achieve effect and attach interest _obscuris vera involvens_--wrapping the +truth in darkness. The 'darkness' will be relative, as his own +contemporaries, being more instructed and sophisticated than we are, will +find those things transparent, or at least translucent, which remain +opaque enough to us. And, of course, as epithets and adjectives that seem +fresh to us will smell of the inkhorn to him, he will have to exert his +ingenuity to find parallel expressions which would startle us by their +oddity if we met with them now. + +A danger, therefore, which the poets of the future will need all their +ingenuity to avoid, will be the cultivation of a patent artificiality, a +forcing of the note until it ceases to rouse an echo in the human heart. +There will be a determination to sweep away all previously recognized +impressions. Affectation, that is to say the obtaining of an effect by +illegitimate means, is an offence against the Muses which they never fail +to avenge by oblivion or by a curtailed and impeded circulation. We may +instructively examine the history of literature with special attention to +this fault, and we find it in all cases to have been fatal. It was fatal +to the poetry of Alexandria, which closed, as you know, in an obscurity to +which the title of Lycophrontic darkness has been given from the name of +its most extravagant exponent. It was fatal to several highly-gifted +writers of the close of the Elizabethan period, who endeavoured to give +freshness to an outworn scheme of poetic ornament; I need only remind you +of the impenetrable cloud or fog, by Cyril Tourneur, called _The +Transform'd Metamorphosis_, and of the cryptic rhymed dramas of Lord +Brooke. It has not been fatal, I hope, but I think desperately perilous to +a beautiful talent of our own age, the amiable Stephane Mallarme. Nothing, +I feel, is more dangerous to the health of poetry than the praise given by +a group of irresponsible disciples to verse which transfers commonplace +thought to an exaggerated, violent, and involved scheme of diction, and I +confess that I should regard the future of poetry in this country with +much more apprehension than I do, if I believed that the purely learned +poet, the prosodical pedant, was destined to become paramount amongst us. +That would, indeed, threaten the permanence of the art; and it is for that +reason that I look with a certain measure of alarm on the excess of +verbiage about poetry which attends not merely criticism, which matters +little, but the actual production and creation. I am confident, however, +that the common sense of readers will always bring about a reaction in +favour of sanity and lucidity. + +One great objection to the introduction of a tortured and affected style +into verse-writing is the sacrifice which has to be made of that dignity +and sweetness, that suave elevation, which marks all successful +masterpieces. Perhaps as difficult a quality to attain as any which the +poetry of the future will be called upon to study is stateliness, what the +French call 'la vraie hauteur'. This elevation of style, this dignity, is +foreign to democracies, and it is hard to sustain it in the rude air of +modern life. It easily degenerates, as Europe saw it degenerate for a +century and a half, into pomposity relieved by flatness. It is apt to +become a mere sonorous rhetoric, a cultivation of empty fine phrases. If +we examine the serious poetry of the end of the seventeenth and the +greater part of the eighteenth century,--especially in the other countries +of Europe, for England was never without some dew on the +threshing-floor,--if we examine it in France, for instance, between Racine +and Andre Chenier, we are obliged to recognize that it was very rarely +both genuine and appropriate. The Romantic Revival, which we are beginning +ungratefully to decry, did at least restore to poetry the sense of a +genuine stateliness of expression, which once more gave it the requisite +dignity, and made it a vehicle for the vital and the noble sentiments of +humanity. + +Let us now turn, in our conjectural survey, from the form to the subjects +with which the poetry of the future is likely to be engaged. Here we are +confronted with the fact that, if we examine the whole of history, we see +that the domain of verse has been persistently narrowed by the incursions +of a more and more powerful and wide-embracing prose. At the dawn of +civilization poetry had it all its own way. If instruction was desired +upon any sphere of human knowledge or energy, the bard produced it in a +prosodical shape, combining with the dignity of form the aid which the +memory borrowed from a pattern or a song. Thus you conceive of a Hesiod +before you think of a Homer, and the earliest poetry was probably of a +purely didactic kind. As time went on, prose, with its exact pedestrian +method, took over more and more completely the whole province of +information, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the last +strongholds of the poetry of instruction were stormed. I will, if you +please, bring this home to you by an example which may surprise you. + +The subject which I have taken the liberty of discussing with you this +afternoon has not often occupied the serious attention of critics. But it +was attempted, by no less a person than Wordsworth, more than a hundred +years ago. I make no excuse for repeating to you the remarkable passage in +which he expressed his convictions in the famous Preface of 1800: + + If the labours of men of science,--Wordsworth said,--should ever + create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, + and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will + sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the + steps of the Man of Science, not only in those general indirect + effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the + midst of the objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries + of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as proper + objects of the Poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if + the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, + and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers + of these respective sciences, thus familiarized to men, shall be + ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will + lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome + the Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the + household of man. + +It is plain, then, that, writing in the year 1800, Wordsworth believed +that a kind of modified and sublimated didactic poetry would come into +vogue in the course of the nineteenth century. He stood on the threshold +of a new age, and he cast his vatic gaze across it much in the same spirit +as we are trying to do to-day. But if any warning were needed to assure us +of the vanity of prophesying, it would surely be the error of one so +sublimely gifted and so enriched with the spoils of meditation. The belief +of Wordsworth was that the poetry of the future would deal, in some +vaguely inspired fashion, with the discoveries of science. But when we +look back over the field of 113 years, how much do we find our national +poetry enriched with ore from the mines of mineralogy or botany or +chemistry? It is difficult to see that there has been so much as an effort +made to develop poetry in this or in any similar direction. Perhaps the +nearest approach to what Wordsworth conceived as probable was attempted by +Tennyson, particularly in those parts of _In Memoriam_ where he dragged in +analogies to geological discoveries and the biological theories of his +time. Well, these are just those parts of Tennyson which are now most +universally repudiated as lifeless and jejune. + +Wordsworth did not confine himself to predicting a revival of didactic +poetry, the poetry of information, such as, in a very crude form, had +prevailed all over Europe in his own childhood, but he conceived a wide +social activity for writers of verse. He foresaw that the Poet would 'bind +together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it +is spread over the whole earth, and over all time'. I suppose that in +composing those huge works, so full of scattered beauties, but in their +entirety so dry and solid, 'The Excursion' and 'The Prelude', he was +consciously attempting to inaugurate this scheme of a wide and +all-embracing social poetry. Nor do I suppose that efforts of this kind +will ever cease to be made. We have seen a gifted writer in whom the +memory is perhaps even more surprisingly developed than the imagination, +employ the stores of his experience to enrich a social poetry the elements +of which, _prima facie_, should be deeply attractive to us all. But I do +not know that the experiments of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, brilliant as they +are, are calculated to encourage the poets of the future to pursue their +lyric celebration of machinery and sociology and the mysteries of natural +religion. Already is it not that portion of his work which we approach +with most languor, in spite of its originality and its outlook upon 'the +vast empire of human society'? And lesser poets than he who seek for +popularity by such violent means are not, I think, rewarded by the +distinguished loyalty of the best readers. We are startled by their +novelty, and we admire them for the moment; but when, a few years later, +we return to them, we are apt to observe with distress how + + their lean and flashy songs + Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw. + +If, therefore, I venture upon a prophecy, where all the greater prophets, +my predecessors, have failed, it is to suggest that the energy of future +poets will not be largely exercised on themes of this intrepid social +character, but that as civilization more and more tightly lays hold upon +literature, and excludes the purest form of it from one province after +another, poetry will, in its own defence, cultivate more and more what +Hazlitt calls 'a mere effusion of natural sensibility'. Hazlitt used the +phrase in derision, but we may accept it seriously, and not shrink from +adopting it. In most public remarks about current and coming literature in +the abstract, I marvel at the confidence with which it is taken for +granted that the sphere of interest occupied by writers of the imagination +is sure to grow wider and wider. It is expected to embrace the world, to +take part in a universal scheme of pacification, to immortalize imperial +events, to be as public as possible. But surely it is more and more +clearly proved that prose is the suitable medium for such grandiose themes +as these. Within the last year our minds have been galvanized into +collective sympathy by two great sensations of catastrophe, each case +wearing the most thrilling form that tragedy can take in the revolt of +nature against the feverish advances of mankind. I suppose we may consider +the destruction of the _Titanic_ and the loss of Captain Scott's +expedition as two absolutely typical examples of what is thought by +journalists to be fitting material for poetry. Yet by common consent, +these tragic occurrences did not awaken our numerous poets to any really +remarkable effort, lyrical or elegiac. No ode or threnody could equal in +vibrating passion Captain Scott's last testament. These are matters in +which the fullness of a wholly sincere statement in prose does not +require, does not even admit, the introduction of the symbol. The impact +of the sentiments of horror and pity is too sudden and forcible. + +My own view is that, whether to its advantage or not, the poetry of the +future is likely to be very much occupied with subjects, and with those +alone, which cannot be expressed in the prose of the best-edited +newspaper. In fact, if I were to say what it is which I think coming poets +will have more and more to be on their guard against, I should define it +as a too rigid determination never to examine subjects which are of +collective interest to the race at large. I dread lest the intense +cultivation of the Ego, in minutest analysis and microscopical observation +of one's self, should become the sole preoccupation of the future poet. I +will not tell you that I dread lest this should be one of his principal +preoccupations, for that would be to give way to a cheery piece of +mid-Victorian hypocrisy which would be unworthy of you and of me alike. +The time is past when intelligent persons ought to warn writers of the +imagination not to cultivate self-analysis, since it is the only safeguard +against the follies of an unbridled romanticism. But although the ivory +tower offers a most valuable retreat, and although the poets may be +strongly recommended to prolong their _villeggiatura_ there, it should not +be the year-long habitation of any healthy intelligence. + +I do not question that the closing up of the poetic field, the depending +more and more completely for artistic effect upon an 'effusion of natural +sensibility', will isolate the poet from his fellows. He will be tempted, +in the pursuit of the symbol which illustrates his emotion, to draw +farther and farther away from contact with the world. He will wrap his +singing-robes not over his limbs only, but over his face, and treat his +readers with exemplary disdain. We must be prepared, or our successors +must, to find frequently revealed the kind of poet who not merely sees +nothing superior to himself, but nothing except himself. I am not +concerned to say that this will be unfortunate or blameworthy; the +moralist of the future must attend to that. But I can believe that this +unyielding and inscrutable attitude may produce some fine artistic +effects. I can believe that both intensity and dignity may be gained by +this sacrifice of the plainer human responsibilities, although I am not +prepared to say at what loss of other qualities. It is clear that such a +writer will not allow the public to dictate to him the nature or form of +his lyric message, and he will have to depend for success entirely on the +positive value of his verse. + +The isolation of the poets of the future is likely to lead them to band +themselves more closely together for mutual protection against the +reasonable world. The mystery of verse is like other abstruse and +recondite mysteries,--it strikes the ordinary fleshly man as absurd. The +claim of the poet on human sympathy, if we regard it merely from the +world's standpoint, is gratuitous, vague, and silly. In an entirely +sensible and well-conducted social system, what place will there be for +the sorrows of Tasso and Byron, for the rage of Dante, for the misanthropy +of Alfred de Vigny, for the perversity of Verlaine, for the rowdiness of +Marlowe?--the higher the note of the lyre, the more ridiculous is the +attitude of the lyrist, and the coarse public applauds the violence of +Diogenes when he tramples on the pride of the poets with a greater pride +than theirs. I cannot help thinking that this attitude of the sacred bard, +maundering from the summit of his ivory tower, and hollowed out and made +haggard by a kind of sublime moral neuralgia, will have to be abandoned as +a relic of the dead romantic past. So far as it is preserved by the poets +of the future it will be peculiar to those monasteries of song, those +'little clans', of which I am now about to speak as likely more and more +to prevail. + +In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation, +been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we +already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of +song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of these +bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is perhaps +instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de Creteil, which +was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was founded in October +1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal dissensions in +January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance of the public, in +contemptuous disregard of established 'literary opinion', a sort of +prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be the active centre of +energy for a new generation, and there were five founders, each of whom +was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in verse. At Creteil there was +a printing-press in a great park, so that the members should be altogether +independent of the outside world. The poets were to cultivate the garden +and keep house with the sale of the produce. When not at work, there were +recitations, discussions, exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up +with the latest vagaries of the Cubists and Post-impressionists. + +This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot +conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one among +the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any measure of +talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in vague and +nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call charlatans, the +refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider that it is +interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a sense correct +when they announced that they were performing 'a heroic act', an act +symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future disdainfully +protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the dreadful impact +of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you wish to pursue the +subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your eye on this tendency to +a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed much evidence of it yet in +England, but it is beginning to stir a good deal in France and Italy. +After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious thing, like the practices of +the Society of Rosicrucians, of whom it was said, 'Our House of the Holy +Ghost, though a hundred thousand men should have looked upon it, is yet +doomed to remain untouched, imperturbable, out of sight, and unrevealed to +the whole godless world for ever.' If I am sure of anything, it is that +the Poets of the Future will look upon massive schemes of universal +technical education, and such democratic reforms as those which are now +occupying the enthusiasm and energy of our friend the Lord Chancellor, as +peculiarly hateful expositions of the godlessness of a godless world. + +To turn to another branch of our subject, it appears to me very likely +that sexual love may cease to be the predominant theme in the lyrical +poetry of the future. Erotic sentiment has perhaps unduly occupied the +imaginative art of the past. In particular, the poets of the late +nineteenth century were interested to excess in love. There was a sort of +obsession of sex among them, as though life presented no other phenomenon +worthy of the attention of the artist. All over Europe, with the various +tincture of differing national habit and custom, this was the mark of the +sophistication of the poets, sometimes delicately and craftily exhibited, +but often, as in foreign examples which will easily occur to your memory, +rankly, as with the tiresome persistence of a slightly stale perfume, an +irritating odour of last night's opopanax or vervain. And this is the one +point, almost I think the only point, in which the rather absurd and +certainly very noisy and hoydenish manifestoes of the so-called Futurists, +led by M. Marinetti and his crew of iconoclasts, are worthy of our serious +attention. It is a plank in their platform, you know, to banish eroticism, +of the good kind and of the bad, from the practice of the future. I do +not, to say the truth, find much help for the inquiry we have taken up +to-day, in the manifestoes of these raucous young gentlemen, who, when +they have succeeded in flinging the ruins of the leprous palaces of +Venice into its small stinking canals, will find themselves hard put to it +to build anything beautiful in the place of them. But in their reaction +against 'the eternal feminine', they may, I think, very possibly be +followed by the serious poets of the future. + +Those who have watched rather closely the recent developments of poetry in +England have been struck with the fact that it tends more and more in the +direction of the dramatic, not necessarily in the form of what is known as +pure drama, particularly adapted for representation to listening audiences +behind the footlights, but in the increased study of life in its +exhibitions of energy. This may seem to be inconsistent with the tendency, +of which I spoke just now, to withdraw from the world itself, either into +an egotistical isolation or into some cloistered association of more or +less independent figures united only in a rebellious and contemptuous +disdain of public opinion. But the inconsistency may very well be one +solely in appearance. It may well happen that the avoidance of all +companionship with the stereotyped social surfaces of life, the +ignorance,--really, the happy and hieratic ignorance,--of what 'people', +in the fussy sense, are supposed to be saying and doing, may actually help +the poet to come more fruitfully and penetratingly to what lies under the +surface, to what is essential and permanent and notable in the solid earth +of human character. Hence, I think it not improbable that the poetry of +the future may become more and more dramatic, although perhaps by a series +of acts of definite creation, rather than as the result of observation, +which will be left to the ever-increasing adroitness of the brilliant +masters of our prose. + +As a result of this obsession in creative drama, I suppose that we may +expect to find in the poetry of the future a more steady hope for mankind +than has up to the present time been exhibited. The result of an excessive +observation of the startling facts of life, a work appropriate to the +violent energy of realistic prose, has been a general exaggeration of the +darker tints, an insistence on that prominence of what was called the +'sub-fuse' colours which art-critics of a century ago judged essential to +sublimity in all art. In Continental literature, and particularly in the +very latest Russian drama, this determination to see blackness and +blackness only, to depict the ordinary scene of existence as a Valley of +the Shadow of Despair, has been painfully frequent. In England we had a +poet of considerable power, whose tragic figure crossed me in my youth, in +whose work there is not a single gleam of hope or dignity for man;--I mean +the unfortunate James Thompson, author of 'The City of Dreadful Night'. I +cannot but believe that the poetry of the future, being more deeply +instructed, will insist less emphatically upon human failure and less +savagely upon the revolt of man. I anticipate in the general tone of it an +earnestness, a fullness of tribute to the noble passion of life, an +utterance simple and direct. I believe that it will take as its theme the +magnificence of the spectacle of Man's successful fight with Nature, not +the grotesque and squalid picturesqueness of his occasional defeat. + +Your chairman has admirably said, in one of his charming essays, that +'History may be abstract, science may be frankly inhuman, even art may be +purely formal; but poetry must be full of human life'. This consideration, +I think, may make us feel perfectly secure as to the ultimate maintenance +of poetic expression. For humanity will always be with us, whatever +changes may be introduced into our social system, whatever revolutions may +occur in religion, in legality, in public order, or in the stratification +of composite life. I confess the only atmosphere in which it is impossible +for me to conceive of poetry as able to breathe would be one of complete +and humdrum uniformity of existence, such as was dreamed of at one time, +but I think is no longer so rigidly insisted on, by extreme socialistic +reformers. As long as there is such variety of individual action possible +as will give free scope to the energies and passions, the hopes and fears, +of mankind, so long I think the element of plastic imagination will be +found to insist on expression in the mode of formal art. It is quite +possible that, as a result of extended knowledge and of the democratic +instinct, a certain precipitant hardness of design, such as was presented +in the nineteenth century by Tennyson in the blank verse lyrics in 'The +Princess', by Browning in the more brilliant parts of 'One Word More', by +Swinburne in his fulminating 'Sapphics', may be as little repeated as the +analogous hardness of Dryden in 'MacFlecknoe' or the lapidary splendour of +Gray in his 'Odes'. I should rather look, at least in the immediate +future, to a revival of the liquid ease of Chaucer or the soft +redundancies of 'The Faery Queen'. The remarkable experiments of the +Symbolists of twenty years ago, and their effect upon the whole body of +French verse, lead me to expect a continuous movement in that direction. + +It is difficult indeed to speak of the probable future of poetry without +introducing the word Symbolism, over which there has raged so much windy +warfare in the immediate past. I cannot help believing that the immense +importance of this idea is one of the principal--perhaps the greatest +discovery with regard to poetry which was made in the last generation. +Symbols, among the ancient Greeks, were, if I mistake not, the signs by +which the initiated worshippers of Ceres or Cybele recognized their +mysterious unison of heart. A symbol is an indication of an object, in +opposition to a direct description of the same; it arouses the idea of it +in the awakened soul; rings a bell, for we may almost put it so, which at +once rouses the spirit and reminds it of some special event or imminent +service. The importance of making this the foremost feature of poetry is +not new, although it may be said that we have only lately, and only +partially, become aware of its value. But, really, if you will consider +it, all that the Symbolists have been saying is involved in Bacon's phrase +that 'poetry conforms the shows of things to the desires of the soul, +instead of subjecting the soul to external things'. + +There could never be presented a subject less calculated to be wound up +with a rhetorical flourish or to close in pompous affirmation than that +which I have so temerariously brought before you this afternoon. I hope +that you will not think that your time has been wasted while we have +touched, lightly and erratically, like birds on boughs, upon some of the +probable or possible features of the poetry of the future. Whatever you, +or I, or the wisest of professors, may predict on this theme of the unborn +poets, we may be certain that there will + + hover in their restless heads + One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, + Which into words no virtue + +of ours can 'digest'. I began with the rococo image of a Pegasus, poised +in the air, flashing and curvetting, petulantly refusing to alight on any +expected spot. Let me return to it in closing, that I may suggest our only +sage attitude to be one of always watching for his inevitable arrival, +ready to put grateful lips to the waters of Hippocrene as soon as ever +they bubble from the blow of his hoof. + +EDMUND GOSSE. + + + + +OXFORD: HORACE HART + +PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY + + + + +The following Publications have been issued by the Association, and those +still in print can be purchased by members:-- + +1907-12. + +1. Types of English Curricula in Boys' Secondary Schools. (Out of print.) +Price 6d. + +2. The Teaching of Shakespeare in Secondary Schools (Provisional +suggestions). (Out of print.) Price 1d. + +3. A Short List of Books on English Literature from the beginning to 1832, +for the use of Teachers. Price 6d. (to Associate Members, 1s.) + +4. Shelley's View of Poetry. By A. C. Bradley, Litt.D. 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Clarendon Press. 2s. 6d. to members. + +Contents:--What English Poetry may still learn from Greek, by Gilbert +Murray; Some Childish Things, by A. A. Jack; _A Lover's Complaint_, by J. +W. Mackail; Arnold and Homer, by T. S. Omond; Keats's Epithets, by David +Watson Rannie; Dante and the Grand Style, by George Saintsbury; Blake's +Religious Lyrics, by H. C. Beeching. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH POETRY*** + + +******* This file should be named 32477.txt or 32477.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/2/4/7/32477 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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