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Wednesday, 9 November 2011

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Going back to basics of poetry:

'The foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart'

Reverting to the question at the end of the article on Parnassian poetry two weeks ago, the answer of course is that the two extracts from Hopkins in which he laments the loss of poetic inspiration, though quite different from each other in expression, are both unquestionably non-Parnassian or "inspired." How is this paradox explainable, that a poet should be able to write inspirationally even in the belief that poetic inspiration has deserted him?

In the first place, this is by no means a unique case. At the beginning of one of his finest poems, 'Ash Wednesday', Eliot seems to be conscious of a similar lack: "Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope ....Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power Because I cannot drink There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again" (That second line - "Desiring etc"- is taken from one of Shakespeare's sonnets!) And in 'The Circus Animals' Desertion", one of his last poems, Yeats expresses at length the sense of being deserted by the usual sources of his poetic imagination in a poem in which he is clearly empowered by it. "I sought a theme and sought for it in vain, I sought it daily for six weeks or so. Maybe at last, being but a broken man, I must be satisfied with my heart, although Winter and summer till old age began My circus animals were all on show..."

W B Yeats

Perhaps the answer is to be found in the little poem, 'Success is Counted Sweetest', by Emily Dickinson: "Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requirest sorest need. Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of Victory As he defeated-dying-- On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!" The acutely felt need of something, the persistent sense of failure in achieving it, is actually what heightens our awareness and appreciation of it. This enables us to conceive of it even better than the one who already enjoys it. The reference to "nectar' is apposite to our discussion, since this suggests the supramundane nature of poetic inspiration.

Thus, when a great poet feels himself cut off from the accustomed springs of his creativity, he tends to envision or imagine them with a more than usual intensity - just as the dying and undisturbed soldier of Dickinson's poem hears the strains of victory more clearly than his surviving comrades, who may be too exuberant and distracted to pay them attention. In the process, his creativity returns to him in a more modest and painstaking, but perhaps more genuine and even superior, way. Hence, in 'Ash Wednesday', Eliot can go on to say: "Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something Upon which to rejoice", even though "The air is now thoroughly small and dry." In the later poem 'Marina", he expresses a sense of thankful wonder as he becomes acclimatised to this condition of renewal: "What seas what shores what grey rocks and what islands What water lapping the bow And scent of pine and the woodthrush singing through the fog What images return O my daughter....What is this face, less clear and clearer The pulse in the arm, less strong and stronger - Given or lent? More distant than the stars and nearer than the eye"

It is George Herbert, Donne's younger contemporary, who most explicitly acknowledges this returning of poetic inspiration in 'The Flower': "How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are thy returns! Ev'n as the flowers in spring;...Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart Could have recover'd greennesse? It was gone Quite underground ...And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing..." Let us try to trace the process of this renewal by returning to Yeats' 'Circus Animals'.

The dejected recollection of the earlier sources of his inspiration - characters and episodes from Ireland's legendary past and his idealisation of Maud Gonne - makes Yeats realise that these have served their purpose. They are no longer valid subjects for his poetry because they no longer represent reality to him. The reality of the past has become the dream of the present. "It was the dream itself enchanted me: Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of." This meditation leads to the powerful final stanza:

"Those masterful images because complete Grew in pure mind, but out of what began? A mound of refuse or the sweepings of the street, Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can, Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."

The ladder refers to the poetic imagination. It had enabled the poet to scale the heights of creativity in a romanticizing fashion. "Now my ladder's gone", in the sense that the poet is no longer inspired by such poetic subjects and sees their transitory value. This makes him look inwards and realise that the source of all poetic imagination or inspiration is the heart, "where all ladders start." The heart of the poet is anything but romantic, it is a jumble of thoughts, emotions, memories, impulses, intention and feelings, all in an unsightly muddle that is unlikely to bear scrutiny by another. Yet the poet must know himself, plumb the depths of his personality however abstruse and unpleasant and, in coming to terms with it, kindle his creative powers afresh. Hence Yeats' conclusion, "I must lie down...In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart." The fact that this excellent poem was the result of such heart-searching itself bears testimony to the efficacy of going back, as it were, to the basics of creativity.

As mentioned in the article, "Taking Stock of 'the Craft so Long to Lerne'", the imagination has two requirements if it is to play its role - technical accomplishment and honesty to one's experience.

When a poet, however technically competent, relaxes in regard to honesty, Parnassian poetry is all he becomes capable of, poetry such as only he can write but lacking in inspiration. Thus our appreciation of Blake, of whose poetry Eliot could say that it has "a peculiar honesty which, in a world too frightened to be honest, is peculiarly terrifying. It is an honesty against which the whole world conspires, because it is unpleasant. Blake's poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry....And this honesty never exists without great technical accomplishment." Much the same could be said of Yeats' later poetry.

So, whenever the poet senses that his imaginative power is drying up, he needs to re-examine his heart so as to ensure that he is being true to his experience, and is not just faking it or adopting a pose for poetical purposes. And from what has been said above, it would be obvious that the figurative heart is not just the seat of emotion - which is the conventional notion of the heart - but the seat of all motivation, the dominant spirit of a man that determines what he is, what he thinks, and what he does. As Eliot says in his essay on the Metaphysical poets, people "sometimes tell us (poets) to 'look into our hearts and write.' But that is not looking deep enough; Racine or Donne looked into a great deal more than the heart. One must look into the cerebral cortex, the nervous system, and the digestive tracts."

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