Читать книгу The Beginnings of Poetry онлайн

18 страница из 68

When, however, in the lectures at Berlin Schlegel begins to define poetry and to theorize about it, holding as he does a brief for the romantic school, for those doctrines of freedom which could not away with any sovereignty of measured speech over the play of fancy and would have no set paths through the “moon-flooded night of enchantment,” he turns squarely upon the test of rhythm.^[76] It is a crude notion of the philistine, he declares, eine bürgerliche meynung, that whatever is in verses is a poem. Nor is much mended by saying only that can be called poetry which ought to be and has to be composed in verse; of late a kind of poetry has come to the fore which rejects verse entirely,—the romance, the novel. And where is yesterday’s scorn for the poem in prose?^[77]

This study of contradictions could be carried into many another field; but it is time to consider a third point,—that in actual argument defenders of the test of rhythm seem really to come off better than their foes. These opponents start in a fog, and fog besets them all their way. The main authority to which they appeal is Aristotle; but over certain passages^[78] in the Poetics, their point of departure, hangs a haze of uncertainty if not of contradiction. It is doubtful whether Aristotle really meant to say what champions of poetry in prose declare him to have said; moreover, these brave texts must be taken along with a brief but pregnant passage in which he looks at origins and beginnings of poetry, a passage which lends itself less readily to the purposes of those who would sweep rhythm from the field. Indeed, sundry say that this is not Aristotle’s meaning in the brave text itself. “Language without metre,” observes Whately,^[79] is a bad translation; it should be “metre without music.” Twining,^[80] one of the best commentators, refers to that other passage, where one is told that “imitation being natural to us, and ... melody and rhythm being also natural, ... those persons in whom, originally, these propensities were the strongest, were naturally led to rude and extemporaneous attempts, which, gradually improved, gave birth to poetry.” Twining makes a judicious comment. “In this deduction of the art from the mimetic and musical instincts, Aristotle includes verse in his idea of poetry, which he at least considered as imperfect without it. All that he drops, elsewhere, to the disparagement of metre, must be understood only comparatively: it goes no further than to say that imitation, that is, fiction and invention, deserves the title of poetry, or making, better than verse without imitation.” Elsewhere, too, as Twining shows, Aristotle puts verse among the requisites of poetry.^[81] A good Aristotelian, J. C. Scaliger, a greater man, by the way, than modern criticism concedes, who first in his time undertook a science of poetry and not a mere guide to the art, who broke new ground, and who had at least the instincts of historical and comparative method, is squarely for the test of verse.^[82] Poetry is imitation in verse. In the opening sections of his work^[83] he calls the poet not so much a maker of fiction as of verses,^[84] defends rhythm almost in Hamann’s phrase as the mother-tongue of man, derives poetry from singing, and, with a touch of psychological method, makes appeal to the child who must go to sleep with song.^[85] In the later sections,^[86] he vigorously attacks the idea of poetry in prose. He is followed by another pioneer of the historic treatment of dogma, G. J. Vossius, who, tossing to the winds any notion that verse itself makes the poet, declares that verse is nevertheless condition of the poetic work.^[87] For poetry was meant to be sung—the genetic consideration has a strong and wholesome influence upon these men—and how can that be sung which has no rhythm? Or take the rhythm from the Iliads; they turn to mere “fabulous stories.” Briefly, while metres without the aid of diction and genius can make no poem, fiction—Aristotelian imitation—is powerless without the help of verse. To the same purpose and earlier, Isaac Casaubon; the test of poetry is rhythm, and any utterance which comes under metrical laws is so far a poem.^[88] Scaliger, Vossius, and Casaubon are “good”; and their credit comes down to them from their betters. Petrarch, with Latin so at his heart, could never confuse poetry and prose. Dante’s definition^[89] is cold comfort for the heretic about a rhythmic test. Of the smaller fry, Ronsard certainly cleaves to this test of rhythm in poetry.^[90] Gascoigne, as the title of his little treatise shows, assumes with his teacher Ronsard that verse is the condition if not the essence of the art; and Puttenham, Webbe, Campion, Daniel, Harvey, even Spenser,^[91] lean the same way. Sidney, it was shown above, is no real opponent. Bacon himself, quoted so often to sustain the cause of poetry in prose, should be read more carefully;^[92] he really tosses to the winds all question of form, and turns to poetry as “one of the principal portions of learning.”