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." |