READING VERSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20768, 10 January 1931, Page 1 (Supplement)

READING VERSE.

THE FUNCTION OF POETRY.

BY C. STUART TERRY

I have just been talking to two friends of mine on the subject of poetry. They astounded me. They spoke of Imagists as familiars, they approved whole-heartedly of modern verse, 'and they appeared to know a tremendous amount about the technique of poetry.

Nine men out of ten, or perhaps nineteen out of twenty, do not read verse. Of the few who do, by far the greater number do not worry about "technique." They read poetry because thought expressed in metro can givo them certain emotional sensations more strongly than thought expressed in prose. It is all very well to consider one of the Imagists a poet, or to consider Miss Sitwell a poet. It is a perversion of words. The word " poet " means a maker, not a conjurer. Imagism is the lurid sound-picture writing which lacks sense, x but claims to give emotional sensation. So, in a similar manner, Miss Sitwell can write of a purple pain or shrilling grass. But, as I have said, a poet is not a conjurer. There is further this question of the " aesthetic function of poetry." Poetry has admittedly an " aesthetic function," though the expression is rather "ghastly. But (rue poetry and good verse would appear to attract tho intelligent only, and not the intelligentsia. From poetry nowadays we expect both rhyme and reason, to say nothing of an elementary knowledge of the principles of scansion. If rhyme be absent, 110 harm, perhaps, is done. If reason be absent we have, as it were, a pattern, or a kaleidoscope, instead of a picture. If scansion be absent we have what is known as " vers libre " —in other words, prose, and prose which is usually as crude as it is artificial. A Medium for the Shy.

Is it. Ihe proper funct ion of poetry to set the intelligent average man an intellectual problem? If that be so 5 an art is become a science, and one cannot but deplore the fact. Should poetry present an apparent problem, but one which has no - actual significance, save one disguised by the maker—or conjurer—to keep people guessing? I do not think it can be that. Or is poetry, here and now, that blessed medium which enables men to say without restraint, and in beautiful words, what their English shyness forbids them to say in prose? The great among poets have not gained by obscurity. Browning is the outstanding example. And do not think that comparison with other times is unimportant. History repeats itself in cycles. It is, always a tendency to easily-running,l ornamented, mellifluous verse, stemmed suddenly by one impatient iconoclast—or a school of men who set their faces so sternly against floridity and the dangers of tum-te-tiim metres that they or their followers become crude and jerky in consequence. Then, through a period of purity, begins the old tendency toward meretricious embellishment and conceit. Victor Hugo was such an iconoclast in France. In England, Elizabethan chain verse and such conceits were swept aside by the abrupt hand of Dr. John Donne, In England, at the moment, the old fin de siecle movement has given birth to a new Phoenix, but one still crude and inexperienced, with the vices of youth instead of those of age. A big man can head such a reaction. His followers fail. They mistake direct simplicity for obscurity and terseness. They imagine that the handling of a metre, the feet of which do not recall the kettle-drum, is the same as abolishing metre altogether. They exaggerate the form, and they lose the spirit. With contemporary verso the war has complicated matters and obscured them, but it is easy to see that when floridity reaches its height, and ornament can no longer be added to ornament, some brave spirit will always say, " Throw it all overboard and strive for simplicity." * But the pity of it is that though simplicity patently is necessary, the result first in point of time is nearly always crudity. And crudity plus the admixture of a small measure of intellectual snobbery does not make poetry. For mv own part, I look upon Imagism as something like measles or mumps, which our Phoenix has to go through before it attains its prime. Classifying and Partisanship. Now the criticism of English literature has advanced so far that poets are divided into " schools." and the undergraduate who is reading Arts, or the young woman who aspires to a reputation for literary taste, must be able to nut any writer of verso into his right box. That is all very well, and has an admitted use. But use so frequently means misuse. These juvenile intelligentsia get up on their hind legs and pit Swinburne against Tennyson (often having read neither) and do similar things as trite and as foolish Poetical appreciation is superseded by poetical partisanship. And that means that because one damns Tennyson, which is excellent, one damns also Tennyson's Ulysses., which is a crime. It need not mean that, but in practice that is what it often does rrean.

My own favourite poets are Browning," Matthew Arnold; and A. E. Housmaij. All have the human element, the common touch. I dare sav the " technique " of each is irreproachable, but it would not worry me very much if it were not. One docs not suspect Shakespeare or Shelley or Byron of having bothered very much about " technique." knew how to write, and they wrote, and what they wrote smells not at all of tho lamp. Technique doesn't matter. What does matter is that an emotion—not a mere description, but an emotion and its attendant circumstances—should be transmitted from the writer to the reader. But the poet must not forget, like the Imagists, that the average reader is ail intelligent reader—not a baby who wants to be amused by meaningless force or beauty, nor yet one of those intelligentsia who want their ultra-sophisticated palates tickled with almost, or altogether, incomprehensible stuff. If the reader finds verse incomprehensible and is satisfied, he is vapid and artificial, lauding a foolish charlatan for a sage. A Test of Value. In a word, poetry is not. just sound; it is sound, thought and feeling. Kipling, had ho been a lesser man, would have been a greater poet. He had sound, thought and feeling, but for the average intelligent reader his mind substituted the whole public, and tho thought and feeling became cheapened. Yet the present Laureate has not scorned to imitate him. Perhaps the function of poetry is to appeal to everyone—that theory sacrifices the most beautiful of the academic poets upon tho altar of the few—but the very great—epic writers. Homer (or the component bards of Homer), Virgil—both wrote for the masses and lost no dignity. Shakespeare, perhaps less lofty, wrote for a public whose genuineness as individuals may be considered greater than that of Miss Sitwell's public, considered in the same way. Neither the " Divina Comedia " nor "Paradise. Lost " can be considered as " showing off." Tho fact is simply that if a thing is lofty, sane and simple, it will make the veriest dunce, for the nonce, appreciate it.. The universality of its appeal is a sure test, of tho value of a poem. So perhaps it is as well that neither Miss Sit well nor the Imagist cult are t alien very seriously outside their own particular amphitheatre. Every seat in that amphitheatre is, of course, in the gallery, ;fnd weird people dress up in weird clothes to go and see the show. '