Classic Writings on Poetry

William Harmon

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9780231503228
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. He is a sovereign, and stands on the centre.—Ralph Waldo Emerson, from "The Poet"

"[The poet] is a seer.... he is individual... he is complete in himself.... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. He is not one of the chorus. "—Walt Whitman, from the preface to Leaves of Grass

Poetry has always given rise to interpretation, judgment, and controversy. Indeed, the history of poetry criticism is as rich and varied a journey as the history of poetry itself. But classic writings such as Emerson's essay "The Poet" and Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass serve as more than a critical "call and response": the works are striking examples of how the finest poets themselves have written on poetics and the works of their peers and predecessors—revealing, in the process, much about the theory and passion behind their own works.

Spanning thousands of years and including thirty-three of the most influential critical essays ever written, Classic Writings on Poetry is the first major anthology of criticism devoted exclusively to poetry. Beginning with a survey of the history of poetics and providing an introduction and brief biography for each reading, esteemed poet and critic William Harmon takes readers from Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Poetics to the Norse mythology of Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál. John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy and Shelley's A Defence of Poetry are included, as is an excerpt from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's verse novel Aurora Leigh, arriving, finally, at the modernist sensibility of "Poetic Reality and Critical Unreality," by Laura (Riding) Jackson. For anyone interested in the art and artifice of poetry, Classic Writings on Poetry is a journey well worth taking.

1

PLATO (?427–348 B.C.)

Plato’s work survives chiefly in the form of dialogues involving Socrates and other citizens of Athens interrogating each other about the nature of truth, love, justice, education, and other topics that continue to engage us. The Socratic dialogue, whatever the topic, is a demonstration, first, of a brilliantly effective educational device, wherein the teacher leads the pupil by a series of questions in a discussion, and, second, of an equally brilliant rhetorical device, wherein one makes a point by step-by-step reasoning and not by mere assertion.

Plato’s complex philosophy usually assumes that we live in a layered world, with mutable material reality at the bottom, experienced by the fallible senses, and some kind of immutable immaterial reality at the top, experienced by the intellect. The world of bodily experience is so conditional, subjective, changeable, and temporary that Plato dismisses it and concentrates instead on the superior reality of forms and ideas. Since our perceptions necessarily involve images of approximations of reality, art is even further removed from the real, since it comprises fictional and even fabulous imitations of images, which are themselves perversions of an approximate reality. Thus seen as radically fictional and unreal, art becomes a seducer and a betrayer, distracting the mind by lies from its efforts to know the truth.

Such a stance toward literary art seems inherently paradoxical, since all who argue along such lines—including Boethius and Tolstoy as well as Plato—must do so in a work that is itself a piece of literature: maybe not overtly labeled fiction, but still a work that must use language, however feeble and fickle that instrument must be.

A dialogue on the general problem of truth was inaugurated by Plato more than 2,000 years ago, and its importance and interest are undiminished today. Plato’s Republic concerns itself with the ideal state and includes a consideration of the role of poetry in education. This dialogue condemns poetry because it corrupts youth—yet another Socratic irony, since it was on charges of introducing new deities and corrupting youth that Socrates was tried and executed. The irony may need to be deciphered or resolved, since it seems that Socrates (at least in Plato’s account) was punished for the same crime that poetry in general was guilty of. If nothing else, the case shows that Athenians cared about the corruption of their youth. These very topics are at the center of some of Plato’s dialogues—especially the Apology—but not in ways that pertain to poetry or criticism.

THE REPUBLIC (CA. 360 B.C.; EXCERPT)

Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893) was an Anglican clergyman and educator. His translations of Plato’s Dialogues appeared in 1871. The translations from poetry come from Jowett’s translations of both Plato and Plato’s quotations from others. The numbers in brackets following quotations refer to book numbers.

BOOK III

[participants] SOCRATES–ADEIMANTUS

[Socrates narrates:]

Such then, I said, are our principles of theology—some tales are to be told, and others are not to be told to our disciples from their youth upwards, if we mean them to honor the gods and their parents, and to value friendship with one another.

Yes; and I think that our principles are right, he said.

But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Certainly not, he said.

And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?

Impossible.

Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.

That will be our duty, he said.

Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses,

I would rather he a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man

than rule over all the dead who have come to nought.

[Odyssey, 11]

We must also expunge the verse, which tells us how Pluto feared,

Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should he seen both of mortals and immortals. [Iliad, 20]

And again:

O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and ghostly form

but no mind at all! [Iliad, 23]

Again of Tiresias:—

[To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,] that he alone should

be wise; but the other souls are flitting shades. [Odyssey, 10]

Again:—

The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamenting her fate,

leaving manhood and youth. [Iliad, 16]

Again:—

And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the earth. [Iliad, 23]

And,—

As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has dropped out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling and cling to one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold together as they moved. [Odyssey, 24]

And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death.

Undoubtedly.

Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which describe the world below—Cocytus and Styx, ghosts under the earth, and sapless shades, and any similar words of which the very mention causes a shudder to pass through the inmost soul of him who hears them. I do not say that these horrible stories may not have a use of some kind; but there is a danger that the nerves of our guardians may be rendered too excitable and effeminate by them.

There is a real danger, he said.

Then we must have no more of them.

True.

Another and a nobler strain must be composed and sung by us.

Clearly.

And shall we proceed to get rid of the weepings and wailings of famous men?

They will go with the rest.

But shall we be right in getting rid of them? Reflect: our principle is that the good man will not consider death terrible to any other good man who is his comrade.

Yes; that is our principle.

And therefore he will not sorrow for his departed friend as though he had suffered anything terrible?

He will not.

Such an one, as we further maintain, is sufficient for himself and his own happiness, and therefore is least in need of other men.

True, he said.

And for this reason the loss of a son or brother, or the deprivation of fortune, is to him of all men least terrible.

Assuredly.

And therefore he will be least likely to lament, and will bear with the greatest equanimity any misfortune of this sort which may befall him.

Yes, he will feel such a misfortune far less than another.

Then we shall be right in getting rid of the lamentations of famous men, and making them over to women (and not even to women who are good for anything), or to men of a baser sort, that those who are being educated by us to be the defenders of their country may scorn to do the like.

That will be very right.

Then we will once more entreat Homer and the other poets not to depict Achilles [Iliad, 24] who is the son of a goddess, first lying on his side, then on his back, and then on his face; then starting up and sailing in a frenzy along the shores of the barren sea; now taking the sooty ashes in both his hands and pouring them over his head, or weeping and wailing in the various modes which Homer has delineated. Nor should he describe Priam the kinsman of the gods as praying and beseeching,

Rolling in the dirt, calling each man loudly by his name. [Iliad, 22]

Still more earnestly will we beg of him at all events not to introduce the gods lamenting and saying,

Alas! my misery! Alas! that I bore the harvest to my sorrow. [Iliad, 18]

But if he must introduce the gods, at any rate let him not dare so completely to misrepresent the greatest of the gods, as to make him say—

O heavens! with my eyes verily I behold a dear friend of mine chased round and round the city, and my heart is sorrowful. [Iliad, 22]

Or again:—

Woe is me that I am fated to have Sarpedon, dearest of men to me, subdued at

the hands of Patroclus the son of Menoetius. [Iliad, 16]

For if, my sweet Adeimantus, our youth seriously listen to such unworthy representations of the gods, instead of laughing at them as they ought, hardly will any of them deem that he himself, being but a man, can be dishonored by similar actions; neither will he rebuke any inclination which may arise in his mind to say and do the like. And instead of having any shame or self-control, he will be always whining and lamenting on slight occasions . . . .

And therefore let us put an end to such tales, lest they engender laxity of morals among the young.

By all means, he replied.

But now that we are determining what classes of subjects are or are not to be spoken of, let us see whether any have been omitted by us. The manner in which gods and demigods and heroes and the world below should be treated has been already laid down.

Very true.

And what shall we say about men? That is clearly the remaining portion of our subject.

Clearly so.

But we are not in a condition to answer this question at present, my friend.

Why not?

Because, if I am not mistaken, we shall have to say that, about men, poets and story-tellers are guilty of making the gravest misstatements when they tell us that wicked men are often happy, and the good miserable; and that injustice is profitable when undetected, but that justice is a man’s own loss and another’s gain—these things ...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Introduction
• 1. Plato
• 2. Aristotle
• 3. Horace
• 4. Publius Cornelius Tacitus
• 5. Longinus (?)
• 6. Snorri Sturluson
• 7. Sir Philip Sidney
• 8. John Milton
• 9. John Dryden
• 10. Alexander Pope
• 11. Samuel Johnson
• 12. Thomas Gray
• 13. William Wordsworth
• 14. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• 15. Francis Jeffrey
• 16. William Hazlitt
• 17. Thomas Love Peacock
• 18. George Gordon, Lord Byron
• 19. Percy Bysshe Shelley
• 20. William Cullen Bryant
• 21. John Keats
• 22. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• 23. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
• 24. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• 25. Edgar Allan Poe
• 26. Walt Whitman
• 27. Matthew Arnold
• 28. Emily Dickinson
• 29. Rudyard Kipling
• 30. Ezra Pound
• 31. T. S. Eliot
• 32. Laura (Riding) Jackson