representation that goes back to man's earliest history; it is the culmination of one of the first and simplest methods devised by man for the imaginative realisation of what he fails to attain in reality. Through the drama, more effectively than through any other form, man can realise himself. No other form is so comprehensive. Once he has broken away from the lure as well as the need of things physical; once he has passed beyond the enchantments of mere entertaining fancy; once he has acquired the power to seek immortal truth rather than mere diversion and narcotic forgetfulness, man is prepared to receive what the drama alone, and tragedy in particular, can yield him. He can realise himself on heights of moral achievement which rise above the valleys of sentimentalism; he can put himself in harmony with laws of thought and emotion that are not peculiar to poetry but true wherever truth may dwell; he may, above all, renew and strengthen that sense of personal identity which gives him his fighting basis for the present and his hope for the future. If the happiness as well as the virtue of man is the theme of the drama, then the way to be happy, as the drama reveals truth to us, is to live according to the laws of Nature; not merely the physical laws which science knows, but those invariable and unalterable laws of personality for which no mere philosophic formulation is possible; laws not learned by education merely, but by some power infused at birth into the human heart and unfolded alone by art. And even though one may not find the happiness he seeks, even though the delights of the drama seem after all an illusion, the true reader will find in this form of poetry freedom from the prejudices of age and land, from the predilections of biased morals, from the importunities of passing desires, from conditions which make him sad or cheerful merely by chance; he will gain a height where, with trembling ears, he no longer hears the voice of detraction, catches no evil suggestions, finds purpose and achievement, hope and attainment, with amity, gratitude, and contentment, dwelling in concert, accepts with equability of temper any evil that is untinged with the sense of conscious wrong; and when, crowned with his threescore years and ten, he still does not, and sees that he cannot, fully understand, he will yet be able to say with that man of wisdom born of the greatest dramatist's brain: "Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended." 17 NOTES 'He might better have said "feelings"; were it not for the desired alliteration he would, perhaps, have said so. ⚫ The expression “language as uttered sounds" is used merely to point a difference from the "silent" printed page. Language is not merely uttered sound, of course. The question herein involved is: Can words made audible make poetry? Apart from the need of breaking down the naive, external conception of poetry which is held by some people, it is only because, under some conditions, uttered sounds, thought of as something separate from meaning or thought, do make something to which we must occasionally concede the name of poetry that there is any need of pointing a difference here. 3 It is of some importance to observe that not everyone would see just what I have seen. Most people do, as a matter of fact, visualise; they "see" things in imagery; so that most people would, in this case, see some kind of rose, definite in form and colour; but others would get only a dim, fringy, colourless image. Some would not see a rose at all; they would get chiefly an image of its smell. Still others, having perhaps recently torn their hands on a rose-bush, would get chiefly an image of touch, probably of the prickly stem of the rose; or of sound merely, as of the rustling of the leaves and the rubbing of the stems as they sway in the wind. A few would get no image directly representing any experience connected with the rose itself; they would merely see or hear the word "rose." But everyone can call up some kind of image to represent the rose; and this image, either by greater or less correspondence to the rose itself, or merely through artificial connection, as in the case of the word "rose," stands as the representative in the mind for the object itself. Moreover, it is true that, for all practical purposes, any image will do. Any image, that is, will do, whether it be a vivid picture of a rose or merely the word "rose," which enables us to act properly toward the object. Whatever be the form of my image of a rose, I must be able at least to distinguish it from other things, the image of a bird, for example. And for poetry, though the vivid, picturing image is undoubtedly the best, any other will do. Experiment has shown that, given any image of a thing, the mere word "rose," for example, all other forms of imagery, definite and clear, and even an image of the colour of a rose, can, though perhaps with a little effort, be called up. Poets are made by nature to "see" things; they use, therefore, chiefly “visual” images; and though most people who are not poets see things also, there are many who do not. These are the people who, prima facie, will be limited in their appreciation of poetry. They cannot readily call up images like those of the poet; and it will, consequently, take them longer to enter into the experience of the poet. As they read Scott's line, for example, they cannot see the rose "as 't is budding new" without time and effort; and for this the ordinary reading of poetry does not allow. But, apart from other considerations, anyone who will make the effort to call up the same type of images as those used by the poet can, so far as this condition is concerned, appreciate poetry if he wants to. 4 I have occasionally put a part of a poet's language in italics. 5 The entire poem should be read as an exceptional expression of this general idea. "The difference between this kind of significant personalising and the less serious and effective form of it may be seen by comparing the expression "brief candle" with Coleridge's little poem To my Candle: Good Candle, thou that with thy brother, Fire, Yet gives most light and burns the keenest at the point. The italics are Coleridge's own. The word "short," accordingly, takes on special significance. It was deliberately selected. But we recognise that these lines are playful and fanciful rather than an expression of something closely connected with life. |