"THAT”

Evening Star, Issue 19026, 22 August 1925, Page 2

"THAT”

Grammatically the word “ that ” abounds in pitfalls for the unwary pupil. A puzzle of our early days ran somewhat like this: “That that that that gentleman said was not that that that he should have said.” What a delectable sentence for a schoolmaster, but for the scholar It is not, however, the grammatical “that” we are after just now. We had enough of it in that sphere to last us a lifetime. We may introduce our consideration of it by a story of Sir Joshua Reynolds. A friend asked him to go to see a certain picture and give his opinion about it. Reynolds was, naturally anxious to pronounce a favorable judgment. Ho enumerated a number of its commendable qualities—correct drawing, good perspective, fine coloring, etc. —but “ hang it it wants ‘ that ’ 1” snapping his fingers, and wanting it the picture was not art. * » * * What is this want, this essential thing in art that we call “ that ”? We cannot toll. But we all know that it is what distinguishes all great pictures, poems, songs, persons. There is something in them that takes everybody captive, or at least everybody who is not obsessed by the vanity of being thought odd. We go into an art gallery; we find the visitors there gradually clustering round one or two pictures. These stand out from the others and compel attention. They have the essential ‘ 1 that ’ ’ which is absent from the others. So it is in poetry. There are certain poems that have outlived the “ envious tooth of time.” They have survived the wreck of matter and the crush of worlds. The rest have joined the great stream of things moving to oblivion. The latter have had merits. They observed the proprieties. The lines were rhythmical, the scansion correct, the moral unimpeachable; but they lacked “that,” and all the rest was of no consequence. It could not make or keep them immortal. Wordsworth, for instance, wrote an enormous quantity of verse. But much of it was written when he was not inspired, and a poet or prophet when ho is not inspired can be as dull as ditch water. So of all other poets, whether they write in prose or verse. What survives is what possesses the “that.” Without this nothing else can keep it alive; with it nothing eke can destroy it. * * * * But, though we know this, it is not possible to determine what the “ that ” is. One may find it in any kind of literature and life. In literature it may he discovered in prose as well as j poetry. And in poetry a careful seeker, if he has patience enough, may come on it in the now forms as well as the old, but not to anything like the same extent. Ho will have to wash up a lot of debris before he comes on a speck of gold. He might be better employed, perhaps, in studying directly the fixed stars than in trying to find his way to them through a crowd of skyrockets. Wo are not of those who think that all poetry must have an unchanging form. Wo are witnessing just now, in what is called “ The New Poetry,” a breakaway from the orthodox principles hitherto inculcated. We have had beginnings of it in Arnold, Henley, and Clough among ourselves, to name no others. In America Walt Whitman set the example, and is followed now by a whole crowd of imitators. So-called “free verse” is very free indeed, sometimes so free as to be ludicrous in its effort. What, for instance, could anyone make of such a curious compost as this? To some the fat gods give money, To some love; But the gods have given mo Money and love: Not too much money, Not quite enough love. And then the first three lines are repeated. This has the honor of being included in an ‘ Anthology of The New Poetry.' And it would be easy to find worse examples outside the anthology. Nevertheless, the “ free verse ” is a noteworthy experiment, and merits at least watching and waiting by thoso j who love poetry. It has already produced not a few poems that mil abide after Time has done his sifting. It may bo difficult often to distinguish them from prose. But that need not necessarily condemn them. For the expression of all high emotion is musical, tenck to utter itself in rhythmical form. Mr Benson says; “The device of rhyme is essentially immature and childish. The uso by poets of rhythmical beat and verbal assonance is simply the endeavor to capture what is a primeval and even barbarous instinct.” And he anticipates the growth among writers of a poetical prose with a severe structure and sequence of thought underlying it. But would poetical prose bo poetry? That raises the problem of what poetry essentially is. And we do not feel ourselves competent to answer it. An eminent critic, who can “build the lofty rhyme” as well, hits the mark when he says; “A man should use whatever form suits him best. What is wrong with most of the free verso writers is not that they write free verse, but that they lack the qualities which make good poets in whatever form they may write. Ihe worst of them are principally governed by a desire to attract. , . The best of them are in some instances honest and intelligent, but devoid of passion and of ear ... or eke so deluded by doctrine that they have failed to make a connection between the emotions they experience and the art they practise, ft is not oven enough to koep the eye on the object if there is nothing behind the eye.” And at that wo may leave it and pass to another point.

Can the “ that ” in literature bo acquired ? Is it primarily a gift of the gods or an achievement of men? It is probably boili. But as applied to stylo it is mainly an acquired art. Consider the masters of style—-Stevenson, Newman, Pater, Huxley, etc.—and their testimony is that the ease, the grace, the charm that take us captive as we read them did not come naturally. Stevenson tells us that ho imagines “ nobody ever had such pains to learn a trade as I had, but I slogged at it day and night.” Sir James Barrie, as a stylist, sits in the seats of tho mighty. 1 Sentimental Tommy ’ is doubtless a self-revelation, and it is suggestive that he should tell us that Tommy failed in his examination because he could not find the exact word, and would nqt put another. A hardly less distinguished stylist writes: “It is only by continual labor that the average man can bring into his style tho opulence, the resilience, and tho brightness by which even tho children and the uneducated

are vaguely attracted.” But poetry is different. The “ that ” in it can never bo acquired. No one can sit down and say “ Now I will write a poom.” RusJiin liked to tell the story of an fintlimate friend of Tennyson’s who had collected from his poems an immense number of illustrations of poetic rules and laws. He drew Tennyson’s attention to it, and the latter replied “ Yes, I do observe them; but I never knew,” That is the hall-mark of the genuine artist. He sings his song or paints his picture with an inward urge that he cannot resist. Shelley, in his ‘ Defence of Poetry,’ interprets this urge as the visitings of the divinity in man. Or, as long before him Bunyan said, when someone congratulated him on his fine sermon: “ I’m only God’s fiddle, the instrument on which he has elected to play hk tunes.” ' * # * * Another question arises ont of this discussion of “that.” Who are to be the judges of it? Is it the average man or the educated man—the university professor or the lounger at the street corner? We should say that the opinion of the common man is the best test of a work of art, at least in the age in which it is produced. The average man is the man who is typical of humanity, and what appeals to him in poetry or art is most likely to possess thoso qualities that are dktinctive and universal in human nature. Here, for instance, is a verse from a poem of Mr Yeats > Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths, Envvrought with golden and silver light— The blue, and the dim, and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light— I would spread the cloths under your feet; But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams. Now, a distingukhed poetical critic who has himself written poems of merit, says “ deliberately that these lines of Mr Yeats are worth all the poetry Mr Kipling has ever written, or ever will write; and I will say, further, that thoso who do not see this saying to bo true will never understand at all in any proper-way what poetry is.” That is surely a hard saying. Is it likely that these lines will live as long as, say, Kipling’s ‘ Recessional ’ ? Wo fear we must be included among thoso who will never properly understand poetry if thk critic’s test bo the true one. We are bound to listen to the opinions of exports, but wo are not bound to accept thorn as infallible or as settling questions for all time. • They have been too often in the wrong for that. It frequently happens in tragic, as well as trivial, issues that “ that ” stone which the builders—the experts—rejected condemns the exports and controls the future.