THINGS AND THOUGHTS.
■ ♦ By John Christie.
A WORD ON SWINBURNE. *1 am pleased," wrote an oldier to a younger friend — "I am pleased to see by your last letter that you find yourself drawn to the stronger and higher kinds of poetry— the stuff that requires not omiy close attention, but sometimes real intelfeclual effort on the reader's part, yet tho stuff that stirs and enlarges the soul, and opens up the vistas of eternity, after the manner of great music whan, it is rightly played to the right listeners. It is pleasing, too, to see you maintain and to know that you yourself are a proof that litei-ary leanings do not necessarily unfit a ma.n for the practical affairs of everyday life; but that they are, rather, favourable to the wisdom which helps one to see that, with respect to the mere utilitarian and his meagre cult, There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. " But what am I to say in reply to your questions- about Swinburne? Perhaps it 'should be admitted that he has written a great deal tliat gives rise to facile imiiauqai' on the part of inferior writens, and to "equally facile criticism by irresponsible critics. One man will tell you tnat he caiirot think ; another, ignoring, or all but ignoring, the poet's better work, will deetaiba him as, a lascivious lyrist, whose poetry is, above all else, calculated to promote sensualism amongst his younger and more susceptible readers. It certainly is a fact that Swinburne has written verses which are exuberantly erotic; and it is beyond doubt true that verses are, in some instances, depraving in their tendoncy. I hare rp sympathy with the im-refl-ecting and irresponsible persons who rather' like a poet to write what cannot be read 1 in the of women. Men entitled to the name of poet may have done that in- the 'past, but such men cannot do so any longer, except at the risk' of being classed as' reversions to departed types, or as mere laureates of the messroom' or smoking room, where there is 100 otten a lubricity which shows how much some men still have of tine ape and tho hog, and how much they suffer, as men, by having- such characteristics appealed to through the medium of art or literature. It is not human nature, but - hog nature, that is stimulated by such means. Manhood requires no such aids . fc> its virility ; in fact, it is in. danger of ceasing, to-be manhood and of becoming beasth&od under their influenca -Therefore, work that stands in this category is not; in a true sense, poetry or ..literary art,- for -that -expresses and nourishes the beautiful and the wholesomely virile in human nature-; and beauty should at all times be unconditionally accessible to both sexes. ' ' \ - "It is no doubt permissibie in art to show all passions in action, especially in the drama, but it is not permissible to describe the -action or to direct attention to it in terms which give a morbid, an unwholesome, a diseased, a licentious colour or bias to the minds that are reached by the appeal. This .leads to a prostitution, a violation of Nature, and is, therefore, not " tru.3 art, _which is Nature's other self — her xe-creation by the human mind, her reflection in the human imagination. Art may deal with ■what is diseased," with what hao become prostituted in Nature, but it can do this admissibly only in two ways — dramatically or scientifically; but n>->t in 3, "way to transmit the disease, perpetuate the prostitution, f or then we have something that drives or leads us farther and farther away from Nature's health and beauty. To do this is to commit a grave crime, to pollute one of Uie* fountain-heads of man's joy and refreshment— art. So Swinburne, in so far as he has done anything- on this level, must be held to have degraded his genius. But even if he has sinned; in this tray he has, in other respects, such splendid qualities that wa must guard against lop-sidedness in our judgments of him. "Personally, I. think Swinburne has more genius than any other poet of his time; and if his judgment had 1 been equal to his genius She would have given the world nothing but work of the first order and * highest.q uality. To me, his radical defect is , the uniformity of his intensity, nis want of shade, his too unvarying brilliance. In -"consequence of these qualities, liis work is apt to affect the mind as the glare of noon on- seaside sands in the tropics affects the eye. Had he written less this would liavo been much less noticeable. His work would then have been more valuable in itself, and would have delighted, refreshed, and stimulated the mind without in any way exhausting it. But put all this on one side, and, concentrating your attention upon his absolute masterpieces, say if you find them lacking in aught that is essential to the noblest pc-etry. Why, 'Atalanta in Calydon' is, in itself alone, sufficient to assure its 'author's immortality. I do not, in any sense, refer to it as a revival or imitation -of Greek classic forms, but as a poem ■whi-ch gives adequate expression to human Jcot-uro in some of its most undying essentials aud aspects. It is a world-poem of tha order of Milton's ' Comus ' and ' Samson Agonistes ' and of Goethe's ' Hermann and Dorothea,' not in subject or in detail, but in the high excellence of its composition, and in its integrity, beauty, and perfection as a work of art. expressive of things that are immortal in man's mortal nature. R?ad it as a whole, and study its details, and you will see that, in both re ■ epects, it is one of the great and beautiful things of the world's poetry. No sermon is intended; but observe how the catastrophe really results from the ferocious ill-nature of Althea's brothers and the tempestuous, lawless passionateness of Althea herself. Hoy wisely she sometimes speaks, yet how foolishly she generally acts; and in these respects, what an. ©pi-
tome she is of tlie race — do not let us say th>3 sex: Fear thou the gods and me, and own heart, Eest all these turn against thee; for who What wincft upon what wave of altering time Shall speak^a storm and blow calamity? What wisdom, what social philosophy, we Lave here, ani what poetry, too, in the apprehension of tragic vicissitude ; but turn to the poem, said observe the passionate foolishness >f the speaker's behaviour. In relation to Meleagcr, she is a tvpa of the world in its relation to genius, which is born by the world, lives to serve the ■world, and is yet too often brought to disaster by the world, while still in tho height o£ its beneficent activity : A falcon, towering in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and killed. Th& jealousy which prompts her to oppose ber son's natural bias in Jove towards her own sex is as old and as new as the world — it inflamed" her heart and the hearts of other women before her, a-nd it still makes many a mother as unreasoning «as a tigress, and the destroyer or would-be destroyer of a son's happiness. All along here Swinburne's work is of the highest order, whore he exhibits Althea's character and conduct undea- the influence of this mad and merciless passion. ' "Then there is a wonderful truth to Nature in maaiy of the secondary details, a fact wihicht gainsays tha statements of those critics who make out that Swinburne is not an observer. But closely study the description of the immense swamp and ntoxass and its neighbouring vegetation ; study, too, the battks with the boar, and that monster's behaviour when — ' 'fiery with invasive eyes/ 'bristling with intolerable hpir,' and ' charging with sheer tusk '—it attacks and kills Hyleus. Con- , eider, too, the manner in which it bounds into tho air when it receives ite death j wound : The heavy horror with its hanging shafts Leapt, and fell furiously, and from raging ' -, lipS .rFoamed out the latest wrath of all his life. If you have seen a real swamp, or if you have ever been at a wild boar hunt, you prcbably haw been an actor in a scene atialagous to that here described) by Swinburne. When I was a boy, my own father, as a pioneer colonist here in New Zealand', was accustomed to go pig-hunting in the bush and back country, and to take me with him; and I have seen a wild boar rush at one- of our comrades, rip his leg with its tusk, and carry away his gun in its mad^dash past, rind have seen another, when mortally wounded, jump 10ft up into the air. Realise incidents like these when you read the slaying of tho Calydo-nian boar in Swinburne, and see how doing so will heighten your enjoyment of, and" your admiration for, the poet. . "As to the special passages, many migh& b-3 quoted, and yet it is perhaps a critical mistake to quote even one, for few poems are so thoroughly all of a piece as 'Atalaata in Calydon/ and to fully understand and appreciate any particular passage you intist understand, and appreciate tic wiole work. Yet, listen to these lines : When the hounds of spring are on winter's ! traces. The mother of months in meadow or plain , Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain. And to these: We have seen tliee, O Love, thou art fair; thou art goodly, O Love, Thy wings make light in the air as the wings of a dove. Thou art swift and subtle, and 1 blind as a flame of fire; Before thee the laughter, behind thee, the .tears of desire. | "Then, here, in one verse, we find a whole world of noble poetry and high philosophy : But ye, keep ye on earth Your lips from over-speech, Loud words and longing jure so little worth; And the end is hard to reach. For silence after grievous things is good', And reverence, and tlie fear that makes men whole, , And shame, and righteous governance of j blood, And lordship of the soul. And from" sharp words and wits men pluck no fruit, And gathering thorns ihey shake the tree at root; For words divide and rend; But silence is most noble till the end. "Melea^er's passion for Atalanta is ex- \ pressed in words that have the purity and melody of starlight in them: Though thou art as fire Fed with fuel in vain, My delight, my desire, Is more chaste than the rain, More pure than the ctewfall, more holy than stars are that live without stain. And when he dies, tfoese are her parting words : Hail thou ; but I with heavy face and feet Turn homeward, and am gone out of thine eyes. Perhaps you think her cold. She certainly is not melodramatic or sensational, . but Is she not all the truer to the ldei?. j of a strong mind that has be&n, as it were, stunned or dazed into a state which is, in Nature, expressed by means of dumbness? Then, other things press upon her ' attention, distuib, distress, and call for concentration in her mind; and as uhe ' possessor of a complex nature, with other ci grossing interests, she treats love more as a casual incident than, as a domrinating episode. In fact, though »he is loved, love is not an affair of hers ; she has other purposes in hand and at heart, and not being the emotional stereotyped feminine puppet of a shallow sentimentalist, but the heroine of a great poet, she devotes herself to those purposes, like a being called ?nd consecrated by Nature herself. Yes, ' Atalanta in Caiydon ' is one of the poems _of the world. When Swiuburne wrote it, he was indeed! far up on the slopes of ParruissuSi and deep ia the favour of Apollo." •
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Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2691, 11 October 1905, Page 77
Word Count
2,014THINGS AND THOUGHTS. Otago Witness, Issue 2691, 11 October 1905, Page 77
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