Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/272

262 POETRY Import ance of poetry in rela tion to other arts. Where poetry is inferior and where superior to music; to prose perhaps, like Carlyle, having the good sense to see his true function, he himself desisted from writing, and strictly forbade other men to write, in verse. If we consider this, and if we consider that certain of the great English masters of poetic prose in the 17th century were as incapable of writing in metre as their followers Richter and Carlyle, we shall hardly escape the conclusion on the one hand that the faculty of writing poetry is quite another faculty than that of producing work in the arts most closely allied to it, music and prose, but that on the other hand there is nothing antagonistic between these faculties. So much for poetry s mere place among the other arts. Importance of Poetry in Relation to other Arts. As to the comparative importance and value of poetry among the other arts, this is a subject upon which much discussion, of a more or less idle kind, has been wasted. We do not feel called to dwell at any length upon it here. Yet a word or two upon the question is necessary in order that we may understand what is the scope and what are the limits of poetry with regard to the other arts, especially with regard to music and to prose. There is one great point of superiority that musical art exhibits over metrical art. This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for harmony in the musician ? sense. The finest music of ^Eschylus, of Pindar, of Sh ;espeare, of Milton, is after all only a succes sion of melodi jus notes, and, in endeavouring to catch the harmonic intent of strophe, antistrophe, and epode in the Greek chorus and in the true ode (that of Pindar), we can only succeed by pressing memory into our service. We have to recall by memory the waves that have gone before, and then to imagine their harmonic power in relation to the waves at present occupying the ear. Counterpoint, therefore, is not to be achieved by the metricist, even though he be Pindar himself ; but in music this perfect ideal harmony was foreshadowed perhaps in the earliest writing. We know at least that as early as the 12th century counterpoint began to show a vigorous life, and the study of it is now a familiar branch of musical science. Now, inasmuch as "Nature s own hymn" is and must be the harmonic blending of apparently independent and apparently discordant notes, among the arts whose appeal is through the ear that which can achieve counter point must perhaps rank as a pure art above one which cannot achieve it. We are of course speaking here of metre only. We have not time to inquire whether the counterpoint of absolute poetry is the harmony underlying apparently discordant emotions the emotion produced by a word being more persistent than the emotion produced by an inarticulate sound. But if poetry falls behind music in rhythmic scope, it is capable of rendering emotion after emotion has become disintegrated into thoughts, and here, as we have seen, it enters into direct competition with the art of prose. It can use the emphasis of sound, not for its own sake merely, but to strengthen the emphasis of sense, and can thus give a fuller and more adequate expression to the soul of man than music at its highest can give. With regard to prose, no doubt such writing as Plato s descrip tion of the chariot of the soul, his description of the island of Atlantis, or of Er s visit to the place of departed souls, comes but a short way behind poetry in imaginative and even in rhythmic appeal. It is impossible, however, here to do more than touch upon the subject of the rhythm of prose in its relation to the rhythm of poetry ; for in this matter the genius of each individual language has to be taken into account. Perhaps it may be said that deeper than all the rhythms of art is that rhythm which art would fain catch, the rhythm of nature ; for the rhythm of nature is the rhythm of life itself. This rhythm can be caught by prose as well as by poetry, such prose, for instance, as that of the English Bible. Certainly the rhythm of verse at its highest, such, for instance, as that of Shakespeare s greatest writings, is nothing more and nothing less than the metre of that energy of the spirit which surges within the bosom of him who speaks, whether he speak in verse or in impassioned prose. Being rhythm, it is of course governed by law, but it is a law which transcends in subtlety the conscious art of the metricist, and is only caught by the poet in his most inspired moods, a law which, being part of nature s own sanctions, can of course never be formulated but only expressed, as it is expressed in the melody of the bird, in the inscrutable harmony of the entire bird-chorus of a thicket, in the whisper of the leaves of the tree, and in the song or wail of wind and sea. Now is not this rhythm of nature represented by that " sense rhythm " which prose can catch as well as poetry, that sense rhythm whose finest expressions are to be found in the Bible, Hebrew and English, and in the Biblical movements of the English Prayer Book, and in the dramatic prose of Shakespeare at its best 1 ? Whether it is caught by prose or by verse, one of the virtues of the rhythm of nature is that it is translatable. Hamlet s peroration about man and Raleigh s apostrophe to death are as translatable into other languages as are the Hebrew psalms, or as is Manu s magnificent passage about the singleness of man (we quote from memory) : " Single is each man born into the world ; single he dies ; single lie receives the reward of his good deeds, and single the punishment of his evil deeds. When lie dies bis body lies like afnllen tree upon the earth, but his virtue accompanies his soul. Wherefore let man harvest and garner virtue, so that he may have an inseparable com panion in traversing that gloom which is so hard to be traversed." Here the rhythm, being the inevitable movement of emotion and " sense," can be caught and translated by every literature under the sun. While, however, the great goal before the poet is to compel the listener to expect his caesuric effects, the great goal before the writer of poetic prose is in the very opposite direction ; it is to make use of the concrete figures and impassioned diction of the poet, but at the same time to avoid the recognized and expected metrical bars upon which the poet depends. The moment the prose poet passes from the rhythm of prose to the rhythm of metre the apparent sincerity of his writing is destroyed. And now how stands poetry with regard to the plastic to plasti< arts 1 This is in truth a vast subject, and has given birth art. to an infinitude of eloquent criticism in the present century. It cannot be expected that we should be able to discuss it adequately here. Yet this, too, must be glanced at. On the one side poetry is inferior to the plastic arts ; on another side it is superior to them. As compared with sculpture and painting the great infirmity of poetry, as an "imitation " of nature, is of course that the medium is always and of necessity words even when no words could, in the dramatic situation, have been spoken. It is not only Homer who is obliged sometimes to forget that passion when at white heat is never voluble, is scarcely even articulate ; the dramatists also are obliged to forget that in love and in hate, at their tensest, words seem weak and foolish when compared with the silent and satisfying triumph and glory of deeds, such as the plastic arts can render. This becomes manifest enough when we compare the Niobe group or the Laocoon group, or the great dramatic paintings of the modern world, with even the finest efforts of dramatic poetry, such as the speech of Andromache to Hector, or the speech of Priam to Achilles, nay such as even the cries of Cassandra in the Af/amemnon, or the wailings of Lear over the dead Cordelia. Even when

writing the words uttered by QEdipus, as the terrible truth