PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26396, 14 April 1951, Page 3

PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY

[Reviewed by J. C GARRETT.)

English Poetry. By Leone Vivante. Wi’h a Preface by T. S. Eliot. Faber. 340 pp.

The re'der of Signor Vivante’s book ma y well be surprised at its contents, tor a less descriptive title than “English Poetry” could hardly have been chosen. It is true that the volume contains chapters on seventeen English peets from Shakespeare to Cscar Wilde, but not one of these chapters can be called an essay in literary criticism. | As an aesthetici'n. Signor Vivante approaches poetry by the door of philosophy, and is intent on discovering there values v hich can be accommodat'd to his concept of mind. Starting from the general proposition o f romantic idealism that there is a quality of mind which is undetermined by ex’erna] causes, he ransscks the poets for passages which will support his belief. On the face of it this is a strange procedure: a kind of inductive accumulation of evidence to substantiate a doctrine which is after all a matter of faith. Those who are rccustomed to regard poetry as a creative act of imagination have always been wary, on instinct, of mechanical theories of causality which explain the imagination away. Eut they are content with their faith. Logical demonstration (or attempts at it) can do nothing in the end to strengthen or weaken this intuition: Johnson’s positive and truculent “Sir. v e know the will is free ” might well be applied to faith in the imagination. It may be a true faith, but it is undemonstrable. The book consists of numbered jottings or paragraohs: the numbers promote in the reader an illusory confidence that the subject is being systematically discussed. As a matter of fact, the numbers merely scpar'te what look like journal entries as the philosopher has laboured th'-cugh the poets transcribing passages which have been speared for comment. In view of the fact that the author is a man • -ith a theory, the passages selected are strangely unequ?l in value (as indeed are the poets chosen). The plea is a good one. of course: that the perception of emotional value, of infinity, of independence in the mind, so pervasive in the work of poets, is a strong reason for believing that there is in the realm of spirit an area of ultimate freedom. “Poetry.” he says, “may constitute the last refuge—and the l?st bulwark—of philosophy against such pseudo-theories as overlook or ignore all intrinsic character in subjective being. In fact, poets wittingly or unwittingly deal with value as with a fertile truth, and avoid the enormous mistake of considering it as a nonontolocical something.” This is a heartening claim, but its constant repetition. in various forms, throughout the book does not take one much beSind what the Romantic poets said ng ago.

Aestheticians commonlv do not tell us what we want to know; we rarelv recognise as Beautv what thev describe as such. It is legitimate to object (although this book contains manv isolated illuminating remarks), that the intrusion of jar"on is not only repellant but destructive. It is easy to pick out sentences like these; "The objectifying existential judgment, firstly, while positing the active subject not in the Quality, but an abstractly supposed something which should support the quality, is in many cases liable to , mean less and not more truth.” . . .

or. “Noveltv (creative, essential noveltv) is substantive, constituent, not only in the nature of individuality, but also and especially, in all value of universality.” One may justifiably complain (without being Philistine about philosophy or sentimental about noetrv) that the argument becomes opaque under such treatment. A liberal use of italics to point the meaning of sentences is a sure evidence of mental strain. Very often the phrasec’ev" of the hook resembles chips and flakes snJit off wi‘h intense effort from th“ hardest fiiarble. Dr. T. S. Eliot has supplied a short nre'a-e which, apart from suggesting that the book may be read more easily as separate essays, is interesting for its relaxation of the anathema on Shelley. Some time apo we were given permission to read Milton again; it is pleasant to note that Shelley has been re-admitted to the class.