but vers fibre.
It is assumed that vers fibre exists. It is assumed that vers fibre
is a school ; that it consists of certain theories ; that its group or
groups of theorists will either revolutionize or demoralize poetry
if their attack upon the iambic pentameter meets with any success.
Vers fibre does not exist, and it is time that this preposterous
fiction followed the elan vital and the eighty thousand Russians
into oblivion.
When a theory of art passes it is usually found that a groat's
worth of art has been bought with a million of advertisement. The
theory which sold the wares may be quite false, or it may be confused and incapable of elucidation, or it may never have existed.
A mythical revolution will have taken place and produced a few
works of art which perhaps would be even better if still less of the
1 This article appeared in the New Statesma11, March 3rd, 1917. 31
ESSAYS OF GENERALtZAT I O N
BEFORE
•
I 9 I 8
revolutionary theories clung to them. In modern society such
revolutions are almost inevitable. An artist, happens upon a
method, perhaps quite unreflectingly, which is new in the sense
that it is essentially different from that of the second-rate people
about him, and different in everything but essentials from that of
any of his great predecessors. The novelty meets with neglect ;
neglect provokes attack ; and attack demands a theory. In an ideal
state of society one might imagine the good New growing
naturally out of the good Old, without the need for polemic and
theory ; this would be a society with a living tradition. In a
sluggish society, as actual societies are, tradition is ever lapsing
into superstition, and the violent stimulus of novelty is required.
This is bad for the artist and his school, who may become circumscribed by their theory and narrowed by their polemic ; but the artist can always console himself for his errors in his old age by
considering that if he had not fought nothing would have been
accomplished.
Vers fibre has not even the excuse of a polemic; it is a battle-cry
of freedom, and there is no freedom in art. And as the so-called
vers fibre which is good is anything but 'free', it can better be
defended under some other label. Particular types of vers fibre
may be supported on the choice of content, or on the method of
handling the content. I am aware that many writers of vers fibre
have introduced such innovations, and that the novelty of their
choice and manipulation of material is confused - if not in their
own minds, in the minds of many of their readers - with the
novelty of the form. But I am not here concerned with imagism,
which is a theory about the use of material ; I am only concerned
with the theory of the verse-form in which imagism is cast. If
vers fibre is a genuine verse-form it will have a positive definition.
And I can define it only in negatives : ( 1) absence of pattern,
(2) absence of rhyme, (3) absence of metre.
The third of these qualities is easily disposed of. What sort of
a line that would be which would not scan at all I cannot say. Even
in the popular American magazines, whose verse columns are now
largely given over to vers fibre, the lines are usually explicable in
terms of prosody. Any line can be divided into feet and accents.
The simpler metres are a repetition of one combination, perhaps
a long and a short, or a short and a long syllable, five times repeated. There is, however, no reason why, within the single line, there should be any repetition ; why there should not be lines (as
there are) divisible only into feet of different types. How can the
grammatical exercise of scansion make a line of this sort more
intelligible ? Only by isolating elements which occur in other
lines, and the sole purpose of doing this is the production of a
32
REFLEC T I O N S O N 'VERS L I B Rl:'
similar effect elsewhere. But repetition of effect is a question of
pattern.
Scansion tells us very little. It is probable that there is not much
to be gained by an elaborate system of prosody, but the erudite
complexities of Swinburnian metre. With Swinburne, once the
trick is perceived and the scholarship appreciated, the effect is
somewhat diminished. When the unexpectedness, due to the unfamiliarity of the metres to English ears, wears off and is understood, one ceases to look for what one does not find in Swinburne ; the inexplicable line with the music which can never be recaptured in other words. Swinburne mastered his technique, which is a great deal, but he did not master it to the extent of being able
developed them. But the most interesting verse which has yet
been written in our language has been done either by taking a
very simple form, like the iambic pentameter, and constantly
withdrawing from it, or taking no form at all, and constantly
approximating to a very simple one. It is this contrast between
fixity and flux, this unperceived evasion of monotony, which is
the very life of verse.
I have in mind two passages of contemporary verse which would
be called vers fibre. Both of them I quote because of their beauty :
Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth's the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie.
This is a complete poem. The other is part of a much longer poem :
There shut up in his castle, Tairiran's,
She who had nor ears nor tongue save in her hands,
Gone - ah, gone - untouched, unreachable -
She who could never live save through one person,
She who could never speak save to one person,
And all the rest of her a shijiing change,
A broken bundle of mirrors . . . -
,
It is obvious that the charm of these lines could not be, without
the constant suggestion and the skilful evasion of iambic pentameter.
33
ESSAYS O F GENERAI.I ZAT I ON · BEFO R E 1 9 1 8
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, and especially in
the verse of John Webster, whq was in some ways a more cunning
technician than Shakespeare, one finds the same constant evasion
and recognition of regularity. Webster is much freer than Shakespeare, and that his fault is not negligence is evidenced by the fact that it is often at moments of the highest intensity that his verse
acquires this freedom. That there is also carelessness I do not
deny, but the irregularity of carelessness can be at once detected
from the irregularity of deliberation. (In The White Devil
Brachiano dying, and Cornelia mad, deliberately rupture the
bonds of pentameter.)
I recover, like a spe1lt taper, for a flash
and instantly go out.
Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle ; she died young.
You have cause to love me
, I did enter you in my heart
Before you would vouchsafe to call for the keys.
This is a vain poetry: but I pray _you tell me
If there were proposed me, wisdom, riches, and beauty,
In three several young men, which should I choose ?
These are not lines of carelessness. The irregularity is further
enhanced by the use of short lines and the breaking up of lines in
dialogue, which alters the quantities. And there are many lines in
the drama of this time which are spoilt by regular accentuation.
I loved this woman in spite of my heart. (The Changeling)
I would have these herbs grow up in his grave. (The White
Devil)
Whether the spirit of greatness or of woman
. (The
.
.
Duchess of Malfi)
The general charge of decadence cannot be preferred. Tourneur
and Shirley, who I think will be conceded to have touched nearly
the bottom of the decline of tragedy, are much more regular than
Webster or Middleton. Tourneur will polish off a fair line of
iambics even at the cost of amputating a preposition from its
substantive, and in the Atheist's Tragedy he has a final 'of' in
two lines out of five together.
We may therefore formulate as follows : the ghost of some
simple metre should lurk behind the arras in even the 'freest'
verse ; to advance menacingly as we doze, and withdraw as we
34
R EFLECT I ONS O N ' VERS L I BRE '
rouse. Or, freedom is only truly freedom when it appears against
the background of an artificial limitation.
Not to have perceived the simple truth that some artificial
limitation is necessary except in moments of the first intensity is,
I believe, a capital error of even so distinguished a talent as that
of Mr. E. L. Masters. The Spoon River Anthology is not material
of the first intensity ; it is reflective, not immediate ; its author
is a moralist, rather than an observer. His material is so near to the
material of Crabbe that one wonders why he should have used a
different form. Crabbe is, on the whole, the more intense of the
two ; he is keen, direct, and unsparing. His material is prosaic,
not in the sense that it would have been better done in prose,
but in the sense of requiring a simple and rather rigid verse-form
and this Crabbe has given it. Mr. Masters requires a more rigid
verse-form than either of the two contemporary poets quoted
above, and his epitaphs suffer from the lack of it.
So much for metre. There is no escape from metre ; there is
only mastery. But while there obviously is escape from rhyme,
the vers librists are by no means the first out of the cave.
The boughs of the trees
Are twisted
By many ba.lflings;
.Twisted are
The small-leafed boughs.
But the shadow of them
Is not the shadow of the mast head
Nor of the torn sails.
When the white dawn first
Through the rough fir-planks
Of my hut, by the chestnuts,
Up at the valley-head,
Came breaking, Goddess,
I sprang up, I threw round me
My dappled fawn-skin . . .
Except for the more human touch in the second of these extracts
a hasty observer would hardly realize that the first is by a contemporary, and the second by Matthew Arnold.
I do not minimize the services of modern poets in exploiting
the possibilities of rhymeless verse. They prove the strength of a
Movement, the utility of a Theory. What neither Blake nor
Arnold could do alone is being done in our time. 'Blank verse'
is the only accepted rhymeless verse in English - the inevitable
35
ESSAYS OF GENERA LtZAT I O N · BEFORE 1 9 1 8
iambic pentameter. The English ear is (or was) more sensitive
to the music of the verse and less tlependent upon the recurrence
of identical sounds in this metre than in any other. There is no
campaign against rhyme. But it is possible that excessive devotion
to rhyme has thickened the modern ear. The rejection of rhyme
is not a leap at facility ; on the contrary, it imposes a much severer
strain upon the language. When the comforting echo of rhyme
is removed, success or failure in the choice of words, in the
sentence structure, in the order, is at once more apparent. Rhyme
removed, the poet is at once held up to the standards of prose.
Rhyme removed, much ethereal music leaps up from the word,
music which has hitherto chirped unnoticed in the expanse of
prose. Any rhyme forbidden, many Shagpats were unwigged.
And this liberation from rhyme might be as well a liberation of
rhyme. Freed from its exacting task of supporting lame verse, it
could be applied with greater effect where it is most needed. There
are often passages in an unrhymed poem where rhyme is wanted
for some special effect, for a sudden tightening-up, for a cumulative insistence, or for an abrupt change of mood. But formal rhymed verse will certainly not lose its place. We only need the
coming of a Satirist - no man of genius is rarer - to prove that the
heroic couplet has lost none of its edge since Dryden and Pope
laid it down. As for the sonnet I am not so sure. But the decay of
intricate formal patterns has nothing to do with the advent of vers
fibre. It had set in long before. Only in a closely-knit and homogeneous society, where many men are at work on the same problems, such a society as those which produced the Greek
chorus, the Elizabethan lyric, and the Troubadour canzone, will
the development of such forms ever be carried to perfection. And
as for vers fibre, we conclude that it is not defined by absence of
pattern or absence of rhyme, for other verse is without these ; that
it is not defined by non-existence of metre, since even the worst
verse can be scanned ; and we conclude that the division between
Conservative Verse and vers fibre does not exist, for there is only
good verse, bad verse, and chaos.
ESSAYS OF G E N E R ALIZATION
1918-1930
TRAD I T I ON AND THE
I N D IV I DUAL TALENT
I
In English wntmg we seldom speak of tradition, though we
occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot
refer to 'the tradition' or to 'a tradition' ; at most, we employ the
adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is 'traditional' or
even 'too traditional'. Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear
except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archaeological reconstruction. You can hardly make the
word agreeable to English ears without this comfortable reference
to the reassuring science of archaeology.
Certainly the word is not likely to appear in our appreciations
of living or dead writers. Every nation, every race, has not only its
own creative, but its own critical turn of mind ; and is even more
oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits
than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think we know,
from the enormous ma
ss of critical writing that has appeared in
the French language the critical method or habit of the French ;
we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the
French are 'more critical' than we, and sometimes even plume
ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less
spontaneous. Perhaps they are ; but we might remind ourselves
that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be
none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we
read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own
minds in their work of criticism. One of the facts that might come
to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a
poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles
anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to
find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man.
37
ESSAYS O F GENERA J..IZATI ON
1 9 1 8- 1 9 3 0
·
We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his
predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors ; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed.
Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall
often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of
his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors,
assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the
impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full
maturity.
Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in
following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a
blind or timid adherence to its successes, 'tradition' should
positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple
currents soon lost in the sand ; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great
labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which
we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue
to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year ; and the historical sense
involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of
its presence ; the historical sense compels a man to write not
merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling
that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within