The Loss of Unified Experience:
Changing Sensibility in English Poetry
from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century
Martin Wunderlich
The Loss of Unified Experience: Changing Sensibility in English Poetry from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century
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Table of Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS................................................................................. 2
1
PROLEGOMENA: AIMS AND METHOD............................ 5
2
THE LOSS OF UNIFIED EXPERIENCE ............................. 7
2.1
The point of departure: The metaphysical poets of the
17th century and T. S. Eliot............................................... 7
2.1.1 The "reign of pure poetic truth": a short history of the term
metaphysical poetry ............................................................... 7
2.1.2 How the change came about: T.S. Eliot's theory of
dissociation of sensibility ...................................................... 10
2.1.2.1 Eliot's re-evaluation of the metaphysicals .................. 11
2.1.2.2
The theoretical concept dissociation of sensibility ..... 15
2.1.2.3
Eliot's changing ideas ................................................ 20
2.1.3 The criticised critic: responses to Eliot ................................. 21
2.2
Changing sensibility: textual investigations................. 27
2.2.1 A guiding principle: cultural anthropology - three basic
constants. ............................................................................. 27
2.2.1.1 An introductory note on the concept .......................... 27
2.2.1.2
Love and nature......................................................... 28
2.2.2 A detailed discussion of the poetic representation of death . 41
2.2.3 Exceptions to the rule – Keats, Baudelaire and Rilke........... 58
2.3
Intermediate summary – findings so far........................ 64
2.4
An interpretative principle: The poet and the pendulum four ideal types ................................................................ 65
2.4.1 Max Weber's theory of the ideal type ................................... 65
2.4.2 Relevance for and application in literary studies .................. 67
2.4.3 The ideal type dissociation of sensibility............................... 77
2.5
The lyrical eye: notes towards the definition of a literary
theory................................................................................ 80
2.5.1 A note on psychopathology – a dissociated society? ........... 80
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© 2010 by Martin Wunderlich
3.1 The point of departure: The metaphysical poets of the 17th century and T. S. Eliot
3.1.1 The "reign of pure poetic truth": a short history of the term metaphysical poetry
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2.5.2 A note on reverse engineering in poetry: from impersonality to
epistemological subjectivity .................................................. 83
2.5.3 A note on the relevance of unified sensibility for reception (theory) and the response of the reader ................................ 86
3
CONCLUSIONS ................................................................ 89
4
APPENDIX – THE POEMS ............................................... 91
5
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................. 100
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1
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2 Prolegomena: aims and method
Todas las cosas tienen su
misterio y la poesía es el
misterio que tiene todas las
cosas. Sólo el misterio nos
hace vivir.
Federico García Lorca
I
n 1921 T.S. Eliot introduced a phrase into literary criticism which has
been the subject of an extensive debate ever since. I have the strong
suspicion that with his theory of the dissociation of sensibility Eliot has
managed to provide us with a profound account of the conditio humana of
modern man – or rather with what is wrong with it. And this account seems to
be as valid today, in 2003, as it was in 1921. The implications of Eliot’s theory
are far reaching, as it transcends – like all valuable literary theories - the
narrow realm of literary criticism. However, before we can examine these
implications in more detail, it seems necessary to demonstrate that such a
dissociation of sensibility took place.
The present work is structured in accordance with the three steps of the
logical circle in literary studies (in contrast to the traditional hermeneutic
circle), as described by Göttner1. The underlying hypothesis (which is
identical with Eliot’s, i.e. postulating the existence of a dissociation of
sensibility) is described in chapter 3.1 "The point of departure: The
metaphysical poets of the 17th century and T. S. Eliot". The deductive
systematising of the hypothesis and a first step of testing it is presented in
the subsequent chapter 3.2 "Changing sensibility: textual investigations".
This chapter contains a collection of circumstantial evidence as
substantiation for the hypothesis2. The inductive step of testing the
hypothesis follows in chapter 3.2.3 "Exceptions to the rule – Keats,
Baudelaire and Rilke", in which counter evidence is collected, to some
1
In Heide Göttner, Logik der Interpretation: Analyse einer literaturwissenschaftlichen Methode unter
kritischer Betrachtung der Hermeneutik (München: Fink, 1973), quoted in Fokkema,1977: 141.
2
And thus it tries to fill a gap left by Eliot, who states that "[i]t would be a matter of too much
difficulty, and an enterprise of too great an extent for my present purpose, to show how sensibility and
intellect have been divided against each other since the seventeenth century." (VMP: 162),
circumventing Knight’s warning that "[t]he history of this dissociation of sensibility, like all important
movements of the human mind and spirit, is far too complex to be summed up in a few unqualified
generalizations. " (Knights, 1946: 116).
The
The Loss
Loss of
of Unified
Unified Experience:
Experience: Changing
Changing Sensibility
Sensibility in
in English
English Poetry
Poetry from
from the
the Seventeenth
Seventeenth to
to the
the Twentieth
Twentieth Century
Century
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degree falsifying the hypothesis in accordance with Karl Popper’s
epistemological theories. Chapters 3.4 and 3.5 are theoretical derivations of
the results and a discussion of further implications. The assessment of
canonical texts with regard to the dissociation of sensibility leads directly and
inevitably on to considerations of this process and its implications in the fields
of psychology (chapter 3.5.1) and literary theory (chapters 3.5.2 and 3.5.3).
The textual investigation would be incomplete without embedding it in this
broader frame of its implications.
In every poem we find a representation of intellectual history. And every
poem influences the current state of mind of (wo)mankind. In this present
examination we have to deal with a complex, interdependent relationship,
which is hard to disentangle for the limited intellectual capacity of human
beings. The focus will therefore be laid on poetry and the representational
level: Poems as artefacts conveying the spirit of sensibility and the change of
the poetical faculty since the seventeenth century. Furthermore, the
development, which will be outlined here (as anything more than an outline
would be a task for a Titan), is not limited to poetry, but seems to affect the
general sensibility of the individual and society in Western civilization. The
implications for our present state of mind will be hinted at and we shall also
have a brief look at the perceptive side of poetry and how the changing and
disintegrating sensibility affects the way we read today, keeping in mind that
"All human knowledge is inevitably personal and participatory." (John
Lukacs).
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3 The loss of unified experience
I am born with the clue to my soul. The
wholeness of my soul I must achieve.
And by my soul I mean my wholeness.
What we suffer from today is the lack
of a sense of our own wholeness, or
completeness, which is peace.
D.H. Lawrence
"We need one another"
G
radually establishing the basis for the examination, the following
sections will move from a general reiteration of the characteristics
of seventeenth century metaphysical poetry to Eliot’s reception and the
introduction of his idea of a dissociation of sensibility. The validity of this
concept will then be tested against various poems in the major section of this
work. In coming to terms with the findings the theory of the ideal type will
prove to be helpful. And finally, some implications of dissociated and unified
sensibilities will be hinted at.
3.1
The point of departure: The metaphysical poets
of the 17th century and T. S. Eliot
T
he following sections delineate the creation of the term
metaphysical poets and provide a short account of the changing
reception of these writers throughout the centuries. These examinations –
together with the description of how Eliot has influenced and dramatically
changed the reception – will lead to a deepened understanding of the
ambiguous attitudes towards metaphysical poetry. The key concept of my
focus, i.e. the dissociation of sensibility, will be also be introduced and
elucidated here.
3.1.1
T
The "reign of pure poetic truth": a short
history of the term metaphysical poetry
he terms metaphysical poetry and metaphysical poets have come
to denote a number of English writers of the seventeenth century.
They have been created to establish a convenient category, under which
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prominent figures are subsumed, such as John Donne (1572-1631) as the
most popular representative, George Herbert (1593-1633), Richard Crashaw
(1612-1649), Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
and Henry Vaughan (1621/2-1695). A number of lesser poets are associated
with metaphysical poetry as well, for instance Henry King (1592-1669),
Thomas Carew (1594/5-1640) or Sir John Suckling (1609-1642)3.
The poetry of these writers shares various characteristics, which on the
one hand distinguish their work from other poets of the period, and on the
other hand from their forerunners and successors. It is important to note,
however, that they did not form a closely knit group or a "school" of writers in
any way4. The metaphysical poets were not conscious of the fact that they
were "metaphysical". On the contrary, the term has been introduced by their
critics and used in a derogative way at first.
The origin of the expression metaphysical poetry can be traced back to
John Dryden (1631 – 1700). In his essay "A Discourse Concerning the
Original and Progress of Satire" written in 1693, the term "metaphysics" is
mentioned for the first time in connection with John Donne:
[...] Were he [Donne] translated into numbers, and English,
he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression [...] He
affects the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his
amorous verses, where nature only should reign; and
perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations
of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and
entertain them with the softnesses of love. (Dryden, 1900:
19, my italics)
3
Some anthologies (cf. for example Helen Gardner: 1966) also include such writers as William
Shakespeare or Ben Jonson, who have been the predecessors of the metaphysicals or poets, such as
John Milton, who do not share the major distinguishing characteristic of the unified sensibility (as
elaborated by T. S. Eliot, cf. chapter 3.1.2) of the metaphysical poets.
Including John Milton in such an anthology (setting aside T.S. Eliot’s views on Milton) seems rather
doubtful, as can be derived from the following statement: "What am I to say of that branch of learning
which the Peripatetics call metaphysics? It is not, as the authority of great men would have me
believe, an exceedingly rich Art; it is, I say, not an Art at all, but a sinister rock, a quagmire of
fallacies, devised to cause shipwreck and pestilence. These are the wounds, to which I have already
referred, which the ignorance of gownsmen inflicts; and this monkish disease has already infected
natural philosophy to a considerable extent; the mathematicians too are afflicted with a longing for the
petty triumph of demonstrative rhetoric." Phyllis B. Tillyard, Milton - Private Correspondence and
Academic Exercises translated from the Latin, (intro. by E.M.W. Tillyard) (Cambridge: University
Press, 1932) p. 116.
4
Nevertheless, references to the "School of Donne" can still be encountered in the respective literature
(cf. for example Rajnath, 1980:114; Bloom, 1986b: viii; Sanders, 1996: 572).
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3.1.1 The "reign of pure poetic truth": a short history of the term metaphysical poetry
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Note the prescriptive passages ("Should") and the generally pejorative tone
of the excerpt and it becomes clear that the style of Donne’s poetry was not
to the taste of Dryden, nor to most of Dryden’s contemporaries.5
Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) as "[...] the strongest critic in
Western literary tradition […]" (Bloom, 1986b: 5) continued the reception of
the writers, who by then had come into existence as the metaphysical poets,
with this negative attitude towards their style. In the section on Abraham
Cowley in his Lives of the Poets he states in 1779: "About the beginning of
the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the
metaphysical poets [...]" (Johnson, 1925: 11) and goes on to denounce them
in the following well-known passage:
But wit [...] may be [...] considered as a kind of discordia
concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery
of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike. The
most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.
(Johnson: 1925, 11, italics original).
The negatively connotated expressions ("occult", "violence") attributed to the
metaphysical style by Johnson demonstrate his distaste for the unity of
disparate images found in metaphysical poetry.6 The basis for the latter
statement can be seen in
[...] Aristotle's dictum that poetry teaches universals rather
than particulars, a fundamental point in the theory that
condemned the metaphysicals and led Dr. Johnson to
comment adversely on the crackling of the bay leaves in
Cowley's ode. (Sharp, 1965: 71).
In a letter to Henry Cromwell, dating from the 17th of December 1710,
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) writes with regard to Donne:
Nothing regular or just can be expected from him. All that
regards design, form, fable, which is the soul of poetry; all
that concerns exactness, or consent of parts, which is the
body, will probably be wanting. Only pretty conceptions,
fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of
neat cast of verse, which are properly the dress, gems or
loose ornaments of poetry, may be found in these lines.
5
However, Sharp points out similarities between the writings of Donne and Dryden (cf. Sharp, 1965:
181f).
6
Bloom notes that these statements are derived from limitations of Johnson’s view: "[...] we are
rightly convinced that Johnson's sensibility was surprisingly narrow when he read the Metaphysicals.
On the basis of his quotations from Donne in the Life of Cowley, Johnson seems to have shied away
from Donne's divine poems, and he avoids quoting from Herbert." (Bloom, 1986b: 7; italics original).
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(quoted from Sharp, 1965: 162).
Alexander Pope condemned metaphysical poetry from his Augustan/neoclassicist point of view, stating: "The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the
writers of the metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last
ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality." (quoted from
Sharp, 1965: 165). Apart from these statements by three prominent figures of
the literary "scene", other despicable voices can be found. William
Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649), being a contemporary of the
metaphysical poets, already took a stance against their rising popularity (cf.
Wallerstein, 1965: 26). Michael Drayton (1563-1631) attacked John Donne,
saying that "[his] verses hobling runne, as with disjoynted bones […]" (quoted
from Sharp, 1965: 97). A similarly negative sentiment is expressed by S.T.
Coleridge in his verses "On Donne’s Poetry":
With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,
Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;
Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,
Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.7
The effects which the most influential condemnations8 by Dryden and
Johnson had on the canon formation were tremendous9. The metaphysical
poets were banned from popular and academic reading lists until the
beginning of the twentieth century.
3.1.2
How the change came about: T.S. Eliot's
theory of dissociation of sensibility
How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot!
With his features of clerical cut,
And his brow so grim
And his mouth so prim
And his conversation, so nicely
Restricted to What Precisely
And If and Perhaps and But.
T.S. Eliot
7
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poems, ed. John Beer (London et al. : Dent, Dutton, 1974) p. 327.
8
The quoted statements can hardly be said to be objective analysis, but rather a matter of subjective
taste of the critics and their age.
9
This impact already points to the ideological influence and discursive formation of prescriptive
reading lists, which has more recently been subjugated to a critical examination in the exposing light
of feminist, Marxist and poststructuralist criticism, which shall only be hinted at here.
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3.1.2 How the change came about: T.S. Eliot's theory of dissociation of sensibility
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I
n 1912 Herbert J. C. Grierson published an edition of John Donne’s
poetry10 and in 1921 a full anthology of metaphysical poetry11. The
latter work was reviewed by T.S. Eliot in the Time Literary Supplement12, a
review which lead to a major change in the critical reception of the
metaphysicals. I shall examine the assertions, implications and receptions of
this "[...] brilliantly suggestive essay [...]" (Knights, 1946: 102) in the following
sections.
3.1.2.1
Eliot's re-evaluation of the metaphysicals
T.S. Eliot directly resumes Johnson’s argument and his description of
the metaphysical conceit13 as "the most heterogeneous ideas [being] yoked
by violence together" (cf. chapter 3.1.1). However, Eliot turns Johnson’s
argumentation around and goes beyond the surface of the figure of speech,
referring to its epistemological qualities and constituting a specific state of
mind of the metaphysical poets, which has been the matter of much debate
(as we will see in the next chapter).
In Chapman and Donne T.S. Eliot finds "[…] a direct sensuous
apprehension of thought, or a recreation of thought into feeling [...]" (MP14:
10
Herbert J.C Grierson (ed.), The Poems of John Donne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912).
11
Herbert J.C Grierson (ed.), Metaphysical Lyrics And Poems of the Seventeenth Century: Donne to
Butler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921).
12
The review was later on included in T.S. Eliot’s Selected Essays. It is rather an essay in literary
criticism than a review, in which T.S. Eliot argues for a complete re-evaluation of the metaphysical
poets. The only sections concerned with Grierson’s anthology are the first paragraph and the last
sentence. Perhaps it was this neglect which lead Grierson in his discussion of "The Waste Land" to
assertain that: "The old faults of private associations and allusiveness are there [...]" (Grierson/Smith,
1947: 512).
13
A figure of speech commonly associated with the metaphysical poets; meaning a comparison of two
disparate concepts, often exploiting the metaphorical association to its utmost extent. Cf. for instance
Donne’s use of the compass image in "A Valediction: forbidding mourning" or his use of a flea as the
metaphorical basis for the lover’s argumentation in "The Flea".
James Smith in his seminal essay on the nature of metaphysical poetry defines the metaphysical
conceit (with reference to Marvell’s "The Garden") as follows: "Once made, the figure does not
disintegrate: it offers something unified and ‘solid’ for our contemplation which, the longer we
contemplate, only grows the more solid. Similarly, I think, the mind accepts and dwells on with
pleasure on the conceit of a ‘green thought’ [...]." (Smith, 1934: 234).
More importantly, Smith sets the metaphysical conceit apart from the Baroque conceit and clearly
shows that metaphysical poetry should not be confused with Baroque poetry. The Baroque conceit
"[...] tends to fall apart like trumpery. Neither has it any function in its poem other than that of mere
ornamentation; whereas the metaphysical conceit, stating impartially and at the same time solving the
problem of its context, controls and unifies that context." (ibid.: 236).
14
All abbreviations are explained in section 6 - Bibliography.
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286). He is trying to express that the thought in these cases is not limited to
being a mere intellectual product of an intellectual process, but it is felt. The
capabilities of the head and the heart interact in a peculiar manner in such a
poet’s mind which yields itself to this flux of ideas, culminating in the creative
production of lyrical verse15. Whereas Dryden and Johnson were repelled by
the disparate ideas brought together in the form of the metaphysical conceit,
Eliot argues for the appreciation of the unity into which these ideas are fused,
forming a new whole16.
The unification which is foregrounded by Eliot in this essay is the one of
thought and feeling, which at his time were seen as binary opposites (and
continue to be perceived in this way until today). This idea is elaborated later
on in Eliot’s Clarke Lectures, held in 1926 at Trinity College, Cambridge,
where he describes more clearly what he actually means by "[...] this power
[...] of fusing sense with thought [...]" (VMP: 58). Although he refuses to give
a clear definition of metaphysical poetry (cf. VMP: 224), T.S. Eliot provides a
description:
You have understood that I take as metaphysical poetry
that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by
thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that which
is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without
ceasing to be feeling. (VMP: 220).
The paradigm of this metaphysical state of mind for Eliot is John Donne. In
Donne Eliot observes Balzac’s recherche de l'absolut (cf. VMP: 128) and he
elaborates:
In Donne you get always an emotional continuity, a
movement from the central to the peripheral, from feeling
15
T.S. Eliot describes this special state of mind in a passage, which deserves extensive quoting:
"Tennyson and Browning are poets, and they think; but they do not feel their thought as immediately
as the odor of a rose. A thought to Donne was an experience: it modified his sensibility. When a
poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the
ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza,
and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or
the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes." (MP:
287).
This passage has been rephrased by Mendel: "One way of formulating the distinction is to say that
Tennyson and Browning are engaged in abstract thinking, the thinking of the mind alone, while
Donne practices concrete thinking, the thinking of the body." (Mendel, 1971: 218).
16
This relationship of thought and feeling takes on different priorities with different representatives of
metaphysical poetry (according to Eliot). Donne felt the thought, whereas Crashaw thought the feeling
(cf. VMP: 183).
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3.1.2 How the change came about: T.S. Eliot's theory of dissociation of sensibility
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to thought, to the feeling of that thought, and so on; and in
Donne even the diversion, the descents have a
significance of feeling which sophisticates and
complicates, without destroying, the original impulse.
(VMP: 189).
A prominent idea in Donne’s poetry, which marks the result of this “continuity”
and embodies the unity of thought and feeling, is the unity of the souls of two
lovers (cf. VMP: 54). For the purpose of illustration of the concept, we shall
look at a few lines from Donne17:
We are Tapers too, and at our owne cost die,
And wee in us finde the’Eagle and the Dove;
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us, we two being one, are it,
So, to one neutrall thing both sexes fit.
(lines 21-25 from "The
18
Canonization", my italics )
The idea is further elaborated on in "The Extasie":
But as all severall souls contain
Mixture of things, they know not what,
love these mix'd souls doth mix again
And makes both one, each this and that.
(lines 33-36, my italics19)
The unity of thought and feeling, a unity of binary dichotomies, is represented
in these cases analogically, mutatis mutandis, by the unity of another pair of
oppositional concepts: the male and female principle. The wide-ranging
implications of T.S. Eliot's theory, which can be extended to a cultural and
sociological level, become more apparent here, but will be dwelled on in
more detail further down. For the moment it shall be sufficient to note the
reconciliation of the seemingly dichotomous body and soul, represented by
the bodies and the souls of the two lovers, as Bloom points out:
Among the English poets who underwent the influence of
Italian love poetry of the Renaissance, John Donne stands
out as one who sought to reconcile the errant soul to its
body once more. [...] Donne was primarily concerned
neither with the angel nor with the beast, but rather with
the battlefield separating them [...] (Bloom, 1986b: 12).
17
Being conscious in doing so that William Empson would not have approved of this: "Students in
essays about Donne are to this day copying out the very unhelpful remarks about him by Eliot, such as
that he felt his thoughts [...]" (Empson, 1993:130).
18
Gardner, 1966: 61f.
19
Ibid.: 74f.
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Eliot's argumentation in his essay "The Metaphysical Poets" conveys a
criticism of society20. He connects the state of mind of the poets with the
state of mind of the age they live in, as the two constitute an inextricable
interdependent relation, a dynamic dependency, fecundating one another. In
the Clarke Lectures Eliot refers to this relation of the poet to his/her times by
relating poetry to the period of production: "It is these moments of history
when human sensibility is momentarily enlarged in certain directions to be
defined, that I propose to call the metaphysical periods." (VMP: 53, italics
original)21. If there are periods or writers which may be rightly termed
"metaphysical", it follows that there must be other periods, which lack the
respective characteristics. And, according to Eliot, the lack of this "[...] quality
of sensuous thought, or of thinking through the senses, or of the senses
thinking [...]" (IP: 23) is characteristic of the periods and the respective poetry
that came after the metaphysical poets22.
It is at this point of his argumentation that Eliot introduces one of his
most famous theoretical concepts: "In the seventeenth century a dissociation
of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered [...]" (MP: 288; my
italics). This dissociation of sensibility23 is "[...] something which had
happened to the mind of England between the time of Donne or Lord Herbert
of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning [...]" (MP: 287). In turn,
we can conclude that the metaphysical poets possessed a unified sensibility,
which is all the more remarkable, as
20
"If I am right about poetry, then this deterioration is probably only one aspect of a general
deterioration, the other aspects of which should interest workers in other fields." (VMP: 227).
21
Similarly, James Smith states that metaphysical poetry appears "[...] only at high points of
civilization; perhaps only when that civilization is halting for a moment, or is beginning to decay."
(Smith, 1934: 238). More clearly than in Eliot’s qualitative formulation, there is a value judgement
included here.
22
Preceding the poetry of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, Eliot diagnoses a truly
metaphysical age: The Trecentisti of the Italian renaissance and their most famous representative –
Eliot’s all time hero – Dante: "In Dante [...] you get a system of thought and feeling; every part of the
system is felt and thought in its place, and the whole system felt and thought; and you cannot say that
it is primarily 'intellectual' or primarily 'emotional', for the thought and the emotion are reverse sides
of the same thing." (VMP: 182f).
23
As F. W. Bateson has shown, Eliot probably derived this expression from Remy de Gourmont, who
speaks of Laforgue using the words "dissocier son intelligence de sa sensibilite" (cf. Mahanti: 20). A
detailed discussion of the relationship of Eliot and Gourmont can be found in Bateson, 1951: 305ff.
For the present purpose I will take as a definition of "sensibility" the OED-entry 2a: "power of
sensation or perception" ("sensibility", in: J.A. Simpson (ed.), The Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 14
(Oxford et al.: Clarendon Press, 1989) p. 981).
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[o]f the age of Donne and Webster Eliot has said, 'It
seemed as if, at that time, the world was filled with broken
fragments of systems', a description which applies equally
to the chaos of the waste land, in which man knows only, '
a heap of broken images'. (Maxwell, 1969: 61).
Tamplin has provided a similar analysis, stating that
[e]ssentially, the [poetic] expression is 'a struggle for
harmony in the soul of the poet', but what seems to
fascinate Eliot with the Jacobeans is the problematic and
transitional nature of the age in which they wrote. (Tamplin,
1992: 77).
In the Clarke Lectures Eliot expanded on the subject and compared the
poetry of Donne and Chapman to illustrate "[...] the dissociation of object,
feeling and thought in nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry." (VMP: 2).
This theoretical concept of a dissociated sensibility transgresses the
boundaries of the literary and touches on history, philosophy24, cultural
studies. It can be seen (or has to be seen) as the condensed result of an
analysis of sociological, cultural and political processes and we shall have a
closer look at its meaning and implications25 later.
3.1.2.2
The theoretical concept dissociation of
sensibility
In the preceding chapter it has been indicated that "[d]ie Haupttugend
der Metaphysicals besteht nach Eliot in der Fähigkeit, geistige Erfahrungen
ebenso intensiv zu spüren wie sinnliche [...]" (Kleinstück, 1988: 97) and also
that Eliot defends the opinion that this virtue was lost in the course of history
due to the dissociation of sensibility. This theoretical concept has puzzled
critics ever since its introduction and the lack of clarity26 of Eliot’s term has
lead to a number of misunderstandings. An important thing to note is that
Eliot himself does not pass a value judgement on the process of the
24
This transgression is understandable and appropriate: "[...] wise men have called poetry philosophy
veiled in fables." (Wallerstein, 1965: 24). An idea shared by Wallace Stevens: "It made me happy the
other day to find that Carnap said flatly that poetry and philosophy are one. The philosophy of the
sciences is not opposed to poetry any more than the philosophy of mathematics is opposed." From a
letter to Barbara Church, 20.8.1951 (cf. Hamburger, 1969: 37).
25
A detailed account of the process would require a considerable effort of co-operation from various
disciplines, such as historiography, sociology, psychology, cultural studies etc. Eliot was aware of the
implications of such an enormous undertaking (as interesting and challenging as it would be), cf.
Footnote 20.
26
Cf. for instance: "Die Formel dissociation of sensibility ist alles andere als klar." (Kleinstück, 1988:
97).
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dissociation of sensibility:
Therefore I would remind you that I am here concerned
primarily with poetry, not with modern Europe and its
progress or decline; but that if and when I speak of
'disintegration', 'decay', or 'decline', I am unconcerned with
the emotional or moral co-efficient of these terms. The
'disintegration' of which I speak may be evitable or
inevitable, good or bad [...] (VMP: 158).
However, he does pass judgement on the poetry brought forth by this
process, which will be examined in detail later on (chapter 3.2). For the
moment, I will adopt Eliot’s view and try to see the theory as an objective
historical analysis.
In order to elaborate a clear understanding of Eliot’s term dissociation of
sensibility it has to be seen firstly as a reaction against the Romanticism of
the nineteenth century and secondly – and more importantly - as a
philosophical concept. Thus, we have to leave the narrow realm of purely
literary studies and elevate our considerations to a philosophical level (before
descending again into the dungeon of textual analysis in chapter 3.2). This
proceeding is necessary because
[w]hat happened was not merely a literary matter. Indeed
there are no merely literary matters. The concern for
questions of poetry is a concern for questions of life. Eliot,
in seeking a sense of unity in the Metaphysicals, or in
Dante, or in Shakespeare, is seeking a sense of unity in
life which he does see around him in his own day.
(Tamplin, 1992: 110).
Eliot both as a literary critic and as a writer was heavily opposed to
Romanticism. For instance, in his essay on "Imperfect Critics" published in
The Sacred Wood, he states that "[...] there may be a good deal to be said
for Romanticism in life, there is no place for it in letters." (IP: 32). However,
we have to look elsewhere to find concrete reasons for this statement. In his
early essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" he directly launches an
attack on William Wordsworth and his poetical theories, stating that "[...]
emotion recollected in tranquillity is [...] an inexact formula [...]" (TATIT: 21).
Eliot goes on, laying the foundation of his theoretical concept of
impersonality:
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape
from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an
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escape from personality. But, of course, only those who
have personality and emotions know what it means to want
to escape from these things. (TATIT: 21) .
In this passage he is referring directly to the Wordsworthian
"spontaneous overflow of emotions", thus reiterating in different words the
Keatsian accusation of an "egotistical sublime" in Wordsworth’s poetry. Eliot
in his criticism as well as in his poetry strives to transcend the individualised
vision of the world expressed in Romantic poetry and "[...] refuses to accept
[the romanticists’] basic tenet that the sole authority for the artist is his inner
voice, the appetites of his personality." (Maxwell, 1969: 17). The romanticist
idea of the poet was contrary to Eliot’s own conceptualisation of the poet’s
work and the nature of poetry. Maxwell states further that
[f]or Eliot in particular the revolt against romanticism
involved the rejection of the liberal doctrine which held
man's chief end to be the complete development of his
personality. Here again the emphasis was on egotism
rather than on self-restraint. (Maxwell, 1969: 17).
The unity of thought and feeling, which Eliot admired in the poetry of the
metaphysical poets, is to a large extent absent in Romantic poetry. By
proposing his theory of dissociation of sensibility Eliot argues against the
prevalence of emotion in the latter.
Secondly, when clarifying the term dissociation of sensibility, one must
take into account the philosophical notions of this expression. Eliot was
himself deeply interested in philosophy. He studied philosophy at Harvard
and completed his doctoral thesis on the "Experience and the Objects of
Knowledge in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley" in April 1916. From a
philosophical point of view, the dissociation of sensibility can be directly
related to the scientific empiricism of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and John
Locke (1632-1704) and – most importantly – to René Descartes (1596-1650)
and the Cartesian mind-body split.
As a contemporary to Donne, Bacon presumably advanced the
dissociation of sensibility – unknowingly – by his scientific method of
philosophical inquiry into the nature of human knowledge. As Knights (1946:
102f) points out, Bacon acted as a promoter of modern rationalism and
scientific methods and as the founder of the positivistic attitude which still
today (despite Popper) prevails in the (natural) sciences. Smith draws the
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attention to the connection between one of the later metaphysical poets,
Abraham Cowley27, and Bacon’s philosophy: "Cowley's praise of Bacon for
drawing our thoughts from words to things, painted grapes to true grapes,
marks a rejection of the double perspective of nature which engendered
metaphysical wit." (Smith, 1991: 247)28. The "double perspective" referred to
here are the views of thought and feeling. Perspective is, of course, only the
way of looking at an object and its "doubleness" does not imply a
"doubleness" of the perceiving subject. The philosophical characteristic of
metaphysical poetry is indeed the unity of the subject, which embodies this
double perspective. This unity is dissolved in the dualism of Descartes and
Locke (cf. Smith, 1991: 247), a state of mind which Bloom metaphorically
(and rather dramatically) described as the "state of Satan"29. As pointed out
by Snare, the dualism extends also to other concepts: "[…] feeling and
thought, the impulsive and the calculated, the wilful and the judicious, the
passionate and the intellectual." (Snare, 1982: 115)30.
According to Eliot, the dissociation of sensibility originates in the
seventeenth century and we find one major cause for the development (or
decline) in the philosophy of Descartes. The Cartesian dualism, which is
27
In fact, Cowley is less a metaphysical poet than a transitional figure, marking the beginning of the
loss of unified sensibility, at least so in the eyes of Eliot : "[...] Cowley is a symbol of the change from
seventeenth- to eighteenth-century England. With Cowley, all problems are reduced in size and
artificially simplified." (VMP: 185). Eliot connects this with an influence of Hobbes on Cowley (cf.
VMP: 186f).
28
The grapes are, of course, a reference to the ancient Greek painter Zeuxis, who in a contest with his
colleague Parrhasios drew a painting of grapes so well that it attracted the birds, who pecked at them.
Zeuxis in turn was deceived by Parrhasios’ painting of a curtain. Zeuxis demanded that Parrhasios
should withdraw the curtain from his painting.
29
In The Anxiety of Influence he declares: "For Satan is a pure or absolute consciousness of self
compelled to have admitted its intimate alliance with opacity. The state of Satan is therefore a
constant consciousness of dualism, of being trapped in the finite, not just in space (in the body) but in
clock-time as well. To be pure spirit, yet to know in oneself the limit of opacity; to assert that one goes
back to before the Creation-Fall, yet be forced to yield to number, weight, and measure; this is the
situation of the strong poet, the capable imagination, when he confronts the universe of poetry, the
words that were and will be, the terrible splendour of cultural heritage." (Bloom, 1997: 32; my italics).
30
Lee provides further examples: "Classic or romantic, form and content, personal and impersonal,
are not independent of one another, though they are certainly not ‘the same thing’. We can’t have an
idea of one without the other – the analytic separation that is involved in trying to ‘define’ singly is a
dissociation of sensibility." (Lee, 1979: 96 italics original). Bogdan adds contemporary examples:
"Postmodernist approaches to literary meaning notwithstanding, unresolved binary oppositions still
abound: between cognition and emotion, embodiment and distanciation, the political and the aesthetic,
the discursive and the non-discursive, performance and performativity, identity and difference, self
and other, and, not least, the ardour of literary experience – knowledge of literature – and the all too
often arduousness of literary knowledge about literature." (Bogdan, 2000: 34; italics original).
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argued for in the Meditationes De Prima Philosophia In quibus Dei existentia,
& animæ humanæ à corpore distinctio demonstrantur, published in 1641, is a
split between the res extensae (the body or, more generally speaking,
matter) and the res cogitans (the mind, which Descartes equated with the self
and the soul). This identification of the human self with the "thinking thing"
has had far-reaching consequences31:
Descartes' disjoining of mind from body, spirit from sense,
is also a separation of God from the creation if not a
dispensing with God in effect, as Pascal thought it. The
Cartesian account of human nature led straight to Locke's
separation of ideas from things." (Smith, 1991: 246).
If we replace in the Cartesian terminology dualism with dissociation, mind
with thought and body (senses) with feeling, we can directly derive Eliot’s
term dissociation of sensibility from the Cartesian divide32. Steele makes a
similar point:
The Cartesian division of internal consciousness and
external phenomena, the gradual separation of the arts
from the mathematical and empirical sciences, the
formulation of 'Aesthetics' as a branch of philosophical
inquiry independent of Ethics and Metaphysics - these and
other developments in post-Renaissance culture have
tended to isolate the modern writer from important sources
of experience and thought. (Steele, 1983: 58f).
As Harris remarks, the relation of Eliot to Locke is a different one. She notes
that "[Eliot] probably derived it [the thesis about the dissociation of sensibility]
to some extent from John Locke […]" (Harris, 1987: 507) and goes on to
quote John Locke directly, who in 1706 wrote: "Different Sentiments are
different Modifications of the Mind. The Mind or Soul that perceives is one
immaterial indivisible Substance." (Harris, 1987: 508). If we compare this
section of Locke’s writing to Eliot’s statement "A thought to Donne was an
experience: it modified his sensibility"33, the similarities seem to be striking at
first. However, the modification of the mind is not the same as the
modification of the sensibility. The former already employs the distinction
31
Which might be even the harder to perceive, as the Cartesian dualism comes to us dressed in the
illusory cloak of treacherous naturalness. "Why, of course, mind and body are different entities!", one
might exclaim, unaware of the socio-cultural conditioning by means of which concepts are equipped
with meaning.
32
Orr refers to it as the "Cartesian-Newtonian dualism" (Orr, Warwick 7).
33
Cf. footnote 15.
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between mind and body in the Cartesian sense, whereas the latter lays the
emphasis on the unity of sensibility and experience. Assessing an influence
of Locke on Eliot’s literary ideas therefore requires a very flexible
interpretation of the key terms. The influence argued for by Harris might more
appropriately be regarded as being non-existent.
3.1.2.3
Eliot's changing ideas
As is natural, Eliot’s ideas underwent a change in the course of his
development34. In the essay "Donne in our time", published only ten years
after "The Metaphysical Poets" in 1931 – the year of Donne’s tercentenary –
Eliot to some extent readjusts his earlier theory: "In Donne, there is a
manifest fissure between thought and sensibility, a chasm which in his poetry
he bridged in his own way, which was not the way of mediaeval poetry."
(DIOT: 8). Opponents to Eliot’s thesis usually quote only the first clause35,
thus neglecting the "bridge" in the second clause, and extend the statement
regarding Donne to the whole group of the metaphysical poets36. The
negligence extends to the following sentence, which reiterates Eliot’s earlier
theory, here focussing on the playful nature of metaphysical wit: "[Donne] is
interested in and amused by ideas in themselves, and interested in the way
in which he feels an idea; almost as if it were something he could touch and
stroke." (ibid.: 12; Eliot’s italics). It can be derived that by 1931 Eliot had to
some extent revised his poetological theory postulated in 1921, although he
had not abandoned it completely.
Eliot seemingly withdrew his assertions to a larger extent in his later
essay "To Criticize the Critic", first published in 1965. He yields to his critics,
saying that "[…] even if I am unable to defend them [i.e. the terms
'dissociation of sensibility' and 'objective correlative'] now with any forensic
plausibility, I think they have been useful in their time." (TCTC 19). He relates
his theoretical concepts to his own reading: "What I wish to suggest,
34
Rajnath describes this change in more detail, as a "[…] shift of emphasis from image to idea in the
course of the development of Eliot's critical career." (Rajnath, 1979: 149f). He sees this shift in
connection with Eliot’s later rejection of Donne and praise of Herbert (cf. Rajnath, 1979: 157).
35
As is the case, for instance, in Leishman, 1966: 167; Leishman, 1951: 93; or in Bateson, 1951: 309.
36
The critics might themselves have fallen victim to the "[…] two antagonistic forces that would seem
to have divorced the literary from the critical sensibility of the English Renaissance." (Snare, 1982:
115). Unlike the poet-critic Eliot, their realm of writing is usually limited to criticism.
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however, is that these phrases may be accounted for as being conceptual
symbols for emotional preferences [...]" (TCTC 19) and constitutes their
subjectivity in saying that "[…] the 'dissociation of sensibility' may represent
my devotion to Donne and the metaphysical poets, and my reaction against
Milton." (TCTC 20). Eliot in 1965 sees the main advantage of his earlier key
concepts in the fact that "[…] they have served their turn as stimuli to the
critical thinking of others." (TCTC 19), which certainly was the case, as will
be shown in the following chapter.
Notwithstanding the fact that Eliot himself re-evaluated his own
statements in his later career, the theory of the dissociation of sensibility
might retain some truth, which we will examine in chapter 3.237.
3.1.3
The criticised critic: responses to Eliot
Literary critics have applied various evaluations in discussions of Eliot’s
phrase dissociation of sensibility38. Kermode in 1957 referred to the term as a
mere myth (cf. Kermode, 1957: 5) and a doctrine (cf. ibid.: 173), but on the
other hand accepting the remarkable qualities of Donne’s poetry, in which he
observes the very same qualities as Eliot:
A series of poets, culminating in Mr. Eliot, [...] searched the
past in order to discover the moment when the blend of
thought and passion that came so naturally to Donne, and
with such difficulty to themselves, developed its modern
inaccessibility. (Kermode, 1957: 5).
In Romantic Image he also wittily remarks that the dissociation of sensibility
could be ultimately extended to the Aristotelian philosophers Averroes,
Pomponazzi, Cremonini, and to the rediscovery of Aristotelian philosophy in
the thirteenth century and "[...] if we were to pursue the dissociation back into
the past, we should find ourselves in Athens" (Kermode, 2002: 169f) – and
right he may be39.
37
For the sake of keeping the extent of the present examination within reasonable limits, the later
views of Eliot have to be neglected and I will concentrate on the earlier concept of dissociation of
sensibility, as proposed in "The Metaphysical Poets" and in the Clarke lectures (cf. the extracts of
these texts quoted above).
38
Of which I will merely present some exemplary opinions here. A more detailed summary of the
discussion up until 1973 can be found in: Frank, 1973: 190f.
39
Manganaro, for instance, directly contrasts the specific abilities of the poet with strict Aristotelian
logic: "By avoiding meaning the poet is [...] able to focus upon the preservation of that supposed
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Similarly, Morse also degraded Eliot’s phrase as a doctrine (cf. Morse,
1976: 33 and 37) and examines it in the context of archetypal anthropological
ideas, stating that the "[...] doctrine of the dissociation of sensibility is in fact
little more than a retelling of the myth of the golden age." (Morse, 1976: 37)40.
Further down in the very same article, however, he grants it the state of a
theory (ibid.: 38). Müller (1991) referred to it as an error in literary history41, a
point of view which has obviously not been accepted by various other critics
using Eliot’s dissociation of sensibility as an interpretative principle, as we will
see below. Orr referred to the term as a metaphor (cf. Orr, 1998: 11 and 18),
although it is not clear why. Nevertheless, he views the phrase more
favourably:
But perhaps I should state at this point that I am in basic
agreement with Eliot and Leavis concerning the epic poet
and the dissociation of sensibility, even though I think that
their arguments require extensive adjustment and reassessment. (Orr, 1998: 5).
In 1951 Leishman (presumably grinding his teeth) still wrote that this "[...]
theory of a dissociation of sensibility which set in during the seventeenthcentury is still widely accepted as a proven fact, as a firm foundation upon
which to build [...]" (Leishman, 1951: 93). However, he doubts that the term
unity of sensibility is equally applicable to all of Donne’s poetry (cf. ibid.: 92f).
Grierson himself, the editor of the first anthologies of metaphysical
poetry in the twentieth century, opposed Eliot’s theory with regard to the devaluation of Milton to some extent:
primitive mentality that operates according to mystical laws and eschews Aristotelian logic."
(Manganaro, 1992: 93). The hypothesis that the truly unified sensibility might be a pre-Aristotelian
phenomenon can only be hinted at here (and would take Kermode’s statement seriously despite the
ironic intention).
40
It is true that anthropology is closely linked to a study of the dissociation of sensibility. With
reference to comparativist anthropological examinations Manganaro points out: "Rationalist
evolutionism combined with poetic ferver may seem contradictory but they do roll toward the same
authorial end. A profusion of voices may stand out as diversity, but they ultimately move toward the
system or idea that unites, destroying the variation in the process." (Manganaro, 1992: 17).
41
"Während man Eliots Deutung der Literatur des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts – einschließlich der in ihr
zutagetretenden modernistischen Elemente – als eine kreative Rezeption einer früheren
Literaturepoche auffassen muß, ist seine ebenfalls in den Barockaufsätzen formulierte Theorie der
Dissoziation der Sensibilität als ein literaturhistorischer Irrtum einzuschätzen, der in der Forschung
kaum noch diskutiert wird." (Müller, 1991: 1038). This assessment seems quite rash taking into
account the wealth of secondary material dealing with Eliot’s term and the validity of this statement
will be (con)tested by the investigations of chapter 3.2.
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To-day a determined attempt is being made to dethrone
Milton even as a poet. We are told that he corrupted the
English language; that he began that 'dissociation of
sensibility' which vitiated our poetry ever since; that his eye
was poor, and his ear so despotic that the evolution of his
periods is guided not by sense but sound. There is
something in these charges, but not much. [...] If
'dissociation of sensibility' means that thought and passion
are not fused in Milton as they are (say) in the best parts of
Donne, the charge holds as against the theological parts of
Paradise Lost. [...] If, however, the critics mean that there
is no such fusion of sense-impressions in Milton as there is
(say) in Shakespeare, the charge invites to a comparison
of the two poets in respect of their sense-endowment [...]
(Grierson/Smith, 1947: 163f).
The wide-ranging confusion and discordance is – at least to some extent –
due to the inclusion of ideological positions into sober criticism. In Mendel’s
discussion of the matter, for instance, undertones of Marxist alienation can
be observed, linking the dissociation of sensibility to the "[…] shepherd
turned accountant […]" (Mendel, 1971: 220), who is thus removed (or
alienated) from his/her natural habitat and from his sheep (which he only
knows by numbers, but not by their names) and in consequence
"dissociated" from society and him-/herself.
On the other hand, the debates revolved to a large extent around
terminological questions, arising from the fact that Eliot – in his often
patronising prose style – has failed to give clear definitions of what he means
by sensibility, thought, mind, emotion and feeling42. The latter terms have
exhaustively been examined by Rajnath (cf. Rajnath, 1979 and 1980),
however the confusion still extends to the concept of “sensibility”, which
alternatively has been read as a synonym for personality (Lee, 1979: 8), for
feeling (Austin, 1962: 311) or even as a synonym for mind (Riquelme, 1991:
111).
There are several instances in which the dissociation of sensibility has
been applied to literary works as a basic interpretative principle43. Nigro
(1980) applies the concept in an analysis of William Faulkner’s Light in
42
Inconsistencies are pointed out in detail by A. P. Frank (cf. Frank, 1973: 17-30), who also
emphasises that "[d]ie Methode des Auffindens der einheitlichen Sensibilität bleibt unartikuliert."
(ibid.: 204).
43
The following remarks are included here in order to illustrate the value of Eliot’s theory for literary
criticism.
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August and interprets Eliot’s term to refer to a dissociation of men and
women. In this case, the dissociation of sensibility is seen as a force that
drives "[…] individuals away from themselves and from the other." (Nigro,
1980: 193). According to this view, Faulkner "[…] dramatizes the dissociation
of sensibility as a division between maleness and femaleness […]" (ibid.:
194) and relates this dissociation to Calvinistic Protestantism, in which "[…]
such a dissociation is the outcome of a tradition obsessed with the
purification of the tainted body and the recovery of the glorious past." (ibid.:
193). The flexibility of Eliot’s terminology is visible, as all notions of thought
and feeling are absent here (unless one would relate them to maleness and
femaleness – an undertaking which nowadays seems archaic). The unified
sensibility is represented by one character: "Clearly, Lena Grove is the
personification of nature in Light in August, and she is presented as the
counterforce to the dissociation experienced by the other central characters."
(ibid.: 198).
A similar interpretation, in which the dissociated sensibility is
predominantly seen as an inter-individual state, can be found in Louis
Tremaine’s application of the concept to shed light on Richard Wright’s novel
Native Son. Tremaine disregards the fact that Eliot put forth the dissociation
as a mostly intra-individual state44 (cf. the analysis in Tremaine, 1986).
A different view is proposed by Nelson, applying the dissociation of
sensibility to the fiction of P. D. James. The emphasis is laid on the intraindividual dissociation rather than on the inter-individual, which is equivalent
with a shift from a sociological to a psychological point of view, and the
dissociation takes on a more positive meaning:
Not that these early detectives were without passions, or
even pathologies. What distinguished them was their ability
to sever at will the connection between thought and
feeling. This ‘dissociation of sensibility’, as T. S. Eliot called
it, may be of enormous advantage to a detective. (Nelson,
2000: 56).
Nelson, however, goes back to the original meaning of Eliot’s expression:
"Perhaps on some level they [the brilliant detectives] long for a ‘normal’ life –
44
Naturally, such a dissociation ensues the inter-individual alienation (which we can easily observe
with a keen eye nowadays). The latter phenomenon however, is not the focus of Eliot.
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a life, that is, where thought and feeling are never separable, an integrated
life however inept and confused." (Nelson, 2000: 57). He has a closer look at
the novel The Skull Beneath the Skin45, published in 1982 and notes that "In
the fiction of P. D. James, however, this dissociation of sensibility […] is often
a defining feature of the world she portrays." (Nelson, 2000: 57)46.
Fleissner (1988) applies the concept of a dissociation of sensibility
directly to one of Eliot’s own works: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. He
interprets the protagonist as representing a paradigm of a dissociated
personality and constitutes in this character a “[... ] split between outer reality
and the archetypal inner soul […]” (Fleissner, 1988: 27). Furthermore, the
dissociation supposedly presents itself in the refusal of Prufrock’s
identification with Hamlet (“No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was I meant to
be;”47) (cf. Fleissner:1988, 143). Fleissner’s points are based on a
misinterpretation of dissociation of sensibility, which first of all is a state of the
inner self. The fallacy of the second point of the argument is obvious: The
conclusion would be that a unified sensibility would present itself in the form
of an identification with Hamlet, instead of being dissociated from him.
From these considerations two features are clear. First of all, that the
term dissociation of sensibility is a complex one and still far from being
readily comprehensible and, secondly, that despite – or because of - this it
has had a strong influence on literary criticism. For the sake of clarity we
shall take as the meaning of Eliot’s term a narrow definition, i.e. a disruption
and disintegration of the power of sensation with regard to thought and
feeling, primarily as an intra-individual state and secondly as a diachronic
inter-individual and socio-historical/-cultural process. A broader meaning will
also be employed where necessary, in which the narrow dissociation
regarding though and feeling is extended to also affect various other pairs of
45
The title is a reference to Eliot’s poem "Whispers of immortality", which will be looked at later on
(Nelson fails to point this out, perhaps because the connection is too obvious).
46
Nelson’s final conclusion that P. D: James "[...] is a poet in the modern, metaphysical tradition."
(Nelson, 2000: 66) has to be left unexamined here, but it can be doubted, if this assertion would stand
to a close scrutiny as there is no such thing as a "modern, metaphysical tradition" (the collocations of
"modern" and "metaphysical", as well as "metaphysical" and "tradition" are oxymorons in
themselves).
47
T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1962 (New York et al.: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1991), p. 7
(line 107).
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(seeming) antonyms. The following chapter attempts to the reduce the
complexity (by showing how the sensibility has actually dissociated
throughout the centuries) and is (yet another) manifestation of the strong
influence of Eliot.
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3.2
Changing sensibility: textual investigations
Je crois sincèrement que la meilleure critique
est celle qui est amusante et poétique; non pas
celle-ci, froide et algébrique, qui, sous prétexte
de tout expliquer, n'a ni haine ni amour, et se
dépouille volontairement de tout espèce de
tempérament; main […] celle qui sera ce
tableau réfléchi par un esprit intelligent et
sensible.
Charles Baudelaire
« A quoi bon la critique ? »
I
t is an impossibility, of course, for any single man (or woman) to
have an all encompassing knowledge of the lyrical corpus of more
than three centuries. The examination presented in the following investigative
part of this paper should therefore be seen as a humble collection of
circumstantial evidence, which may easily be extended ad infinitum by those
who feel inclined to do so. It has been attempted to steer an appropriate
middle path between the quality and the quantity of the examinations, i.e.
between detailed explorations and the number of poems examined. A
technique of direct contrast has been given preference to a chronological
order and the exposition may be seen as a kind of “slide show”, highlighting
various aspects by means of a meandering focus of diverse intensity.
3.2.1
A guiding principle: cultural anthropology three basic constants.
3.2.1.1
An introductory note on the concept
In trying to limit the extent of the specimens of poetry to be examined a
recourse to the fundamental themes, which have always influenced poetry
(and mankind), has been necessary. The selection of the samples was
therefore not only guided by deductive considerations, but also by constants
of cultural-anthropology (or “cultural universals”; cf. Rosman, 1998: 6f), as
they can be observed to occur throughout the entirety of literary history48. To
limit the extent further, only three such constants have been selected to
48
In fact, the holistic approach of the science of anthropology might be more appropriate to the basic
question of the present work. “All societies must solve the basic problems of human existence [...]”
(Rosman, 1998: 11) and literature can be seen as constituting a part of such fundamental solutions.
Otherwise, it would not exist. Instead of broadening the horizon of literary studies accordingly, the
discipline might be embedded in cultural anthropology as a sub-discipline.
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guide the reader (and the author) through a terrain which would otherwise be
impossible to apprehend. As Sharp wrote: "Nature, love and death are
permanent themes in literature, yes, but how differently man in his various
generations has written about them!" (Sharp, 1965: x). We shall therefore
have a closer look at the poetic representation of love and nature, as well as
carrying out a detailed investigation of the poetic rendering of death49.
3.2.1.2
Love and nature
Probably more than any other topic of poetry, love can be assumed to
be portrayed in the form of strong emotions. Some of the most popular
pieces of metaphysical poetry are dealing with love in an extremely
interesting way - by expressing the feeling embedded in an argumentative
structure.
One prime example is Andrew Marvell’s (1621-1678) "To his Coy
Mistress". The whole poem is divided in three stanzas, which constitute the
basic syllogistic structure of Modus Tollens50. The first stanza commences
with the conditional statement
Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
(lines 1 and 2)
The elaborate (sometimes hyperbolic51) imagery that follows in the remainder
of this section depicts the speaker’s amorous intentions which he would be
more than willing to turn into reality, if only time was not such a limited
49
This proceeding may even be seen as a sort of anthropological “fieldwork”: ”To understand the
informant’s experiences and thereby grasp his or her point of view, the anthropologist strives to go
beyond his or her own cultural categories. In their interaction, the two are, in a sense, operating in an
area between their two cultures. The data are thus produced through the mutual efforts of
anthropologist and informant. This process is repeated with other informants, and a pattern begins to
emerge. The data are checked against the anthropologist’s own observations, as well as with other
informants with whom contacts are more limited.” (Rosman, 1998: 14). Cf. the similarities to the
methodological outline in chapter 1!
50
The syllogistic (and paradoxical) nature of metaphysical poetry is also illustrated by Frank
Kermode, using examples from Donne (cf. Kermode, 2002: 11).
Cf. also Rees, 1989: 93: "The tripartite structure is designed to attract admiring attention: this is a
poem elegant in its bones. But once the syllogistic form has been recognised – ‘Had we [...].But
[...].Now therefore’ – the difficulties are only beginning. " The point she raises attacks the technical
fallacy of the argument’s propositio maior (cf. ibid.: 94). However, it is the nature of syllogisms that
the conclusion is perfectly logical, even if the propositions are not).
51
Cf. for instance lines 7-10: "[...] I would / Love you ten years before the Flood: / And you should if
you please refuse / Till the conversion of the Jews." (Marvell’s italics).
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resource. The fact that the condition is not fulfilled (or - in the language of
formal logic – that the proposition has the truth value "false") is stated at the
beginning of the second stanza:
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
(lines 20 and 21)
The conclusion derived from the lack of time, which is also structurally
represented by the reduced number of lines of the second stanza, is that the
coy mistress should give in and yield to the insisting speaker52. The logical
structure of the argumentation is clearly marked by initiating the inevitable
conclusio with the following words:
Now therefore, while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
(lines 33 and 34)
Using the symbols of formal logic, the poem can thus be summarised:
{{[(A B) ^ ¬A] ¬B} ^ (¬B C)}C
| Stanza 1 | Stanza 2 | Stanza 3
|
A: We have world enough and time.
B: I will praise you as described in the first stanza.
C: "Now let us sport us while we may" (line 37)
In plain words: If A, then we could do B, but A is not the case, so we can not
do B. Therefore, because B is not the case, we have to do C. In even plainer
words, the syllogistic message of love is: If we had world enough and time,
then I could praise you as described in the first stanza, but it is not the case
that we have world enough and time, so I can not praise you as described in
the first stanza. Therefore, because it is not the case that I can praise you as
described in the first stanza: "Now let us sport us while we may".
The speaker dresses his desire in this argument, which constitutes a
paradigm of the unity of thought and feeling referred to by Eliot. The clarity
52
This in fact might be the more favourable option, if the alternative is to listen to more poetry of this
kind, which at times gets rather rough and explicit, e.g. "[...] then Worms shall try / That long
preserv’d virginity" (lines 27-28).
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and linearity of the argument - metaphorically embellished and substantiated
– are not "[...] the words of an importuner who has forgotten his original
purpose [...]" (Klause, 1983: 61), and neither is the lover "[...] losing his
equilibrium[...]" (ibid.). Despite his emotional longing, he is still in control to
think. And despite his reflections, he is still able to produce brilliant
metaphors53.
Love is portrayed in a remarkably different way in Philip Larkin’s (19221985) "Talking in Bed". The poem is written in a rugged form of the terza rima
of Dante’s Divina Commedia, which (except for the last stanza) keeps the
rhyme scheme, but deviates from the iambic pentameter54. As is
characteristic for Larkin’s poetry, the speaker remains in the background and
implicitly contemplates the absence of communication between the two
lovers: "Yet more and more time passes silently" (line 4; my italics). All
wooing and attempts at persuasion are absent in these lines and the
speaker's uneasiness in the present situation culminates in the utterance of
the final stanza:
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
(lines 10-12)
The poem is concerned with the isolation of the two lovers from the outside
world55 on the one hand ("None of this cares for us", line 8) and their isolation
– or dissociation - from each other. The last two lines explicate the reason for
the disturbing silence. Although logically they represent the same content,
the speaker’s longing to find words, which are both true and kind at the same
time, is extenuated by the double negatives. The deep feeling of love is only
present in its absence compared to the past (when it was still present), an
absence which is embodied in the poem as the absence of words exchanged
between the lovers. In their "[...] silence there is a shared isolation"
(Swarbrick, 1995: 110). Sanders' comment on Browning’s "Two in the
53
The use of "despite" here, of course, reflects post-modern conceptualisations regarding the
dichotomous relationship of feeling and thought. This relationship, which seems so natural to us,
would probably be unfathomable for a metaphysical poet.
54
For instance, in the last two lines with 6 and 8 syllables, respectively, instead of 10.
55
Represented by the "wind", "clouds", "dark towns" – lines 5, 6 and 7.
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Campagna" is equally applicable to Larkin’s poem: We hear a voice which
"[...] speaks of distinctness, not union, of an agnosticism in love not of ideal
convergence." (Sanders, 1996: 435).
Unlike Browning, however, Larkin is "[...] reminiscent of Donne's [voice]"
(ibid.), only insofar as the external situation is similar, but the inner state of
mind and feeling of the two lovers utterly opposite. We can observe this for
example in Donne’s "The Extasie":
As 'twixt two equall Armies, Fate
Suspends uncertaine victorie,
Our soules, (which to advance their state,
Were gone out,) hung 'twixt her, and mee.
And whil'st our soules negotiate there,
Wee like sepulchrall statues lay,
All day, the same our postures were,
And wee said nothing, all the day.
(lines 13-21, my italics)
This contrast clearly indicates how differently the lack of communication has
been interpreted. Although it is correct to say that Donne "[...] is here
concerned to make a case for physical love: here he asserts, above else, the
prerogatives of the body [...]", the poem encompasses more than these
notions of physical love and reaches further than being a casuistry for
corporeal love: In Donne’s "The Extasie" the catatonic state corresponds to
the union of the two lovers in a supernatural realm, an ideal (Neo-) Platonic
unity, and thus the poem encompasses philosophical thought, as well as
intense amorous feeling56. It is indeed (one of) the "[...] most analytical,
conceptual, and, in a sense, philosophic of Donne’s love-poems: his most
elaborate attempt to describe that something that was neither merely visible
beauty nor merely ‘vertue of the minde’ [...]" (Leishman, 1951: 220)57. In
Larkin’s poem on the other hand, this unity is disrupted and the relationship
56
Tillyard points out with regard to this particular poem that it represents "[...] the mixed constitution
of man. borderline between man and angel" and Donne applies the "[...] well-known mystical
experience of the ecstasies as his medium." (Tillyard, 1952: 71; italics original).
57
Leishman continues: "And Donne did not reach this conception merely through immediate
experience, but as the result of a process of abstraction, as the result of a careful analysis of the
elements in immediate experience. Donne, in fact, has differentiated, distinguished and interpenetrated
with a thought a whole area of experience which had hitherto remained undifferentiated and
unexplored." (Leishman 1951: 220f). It is remarkable that Leishman here uses Bradleian and Eliot’s
terminology ("immediate experience"), thus contradicting his earlier remarks in the same work on
Eliot’s term dissociation of sensibility (cf. ibid. 91ff).
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of the "two people being honest" (line 3) is merely an instance of
(post)modern emptiness and dissociation.
The physical reaction to love is described in S.T. Coleridge’s "Desire."
In this very short poem a fissure between the body and feeling is manifest:
Where true love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.
The "earthly frame" reacts to the emotion of love with a reflex, an
unconditioned response to a stimulus. The body as conceptualised by
Coleridge here does not think or reflect and is even set apart against the
heart and love. It is merely a mediator of the heart’s intention, which
"translates the language of the heart", but is not part of the emotion. The
unity of these entities (body, emotion, love, heart) is therefore a disrupted
one and the metaphysical balance is shifted to a preference of feeling.
A similar case is portrayed more elaborately in P.B. Shelley’s "The
Flight of Love", in which the desolate speaker intensely mourns the loss of
love. In the last stanza of the poem reason is explicitly set apart against the
feeling of lost love:
Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
(lines 25-32; my italics)
Seemingly the speaker has detached him-/herself here and observes the
situation from an elevated point of view by raising the suffering to a generic
level (the second person pronouns can be seen as a generic form of address
here). This enables the ironic line "Bright reason will mock thee", in which
reason is depicted as an entity separate from the self, even as a superior
authority of sound judgement. The metaphors of destruction, which are
evoked in the first stanza, are thus ridiculed by the ratio. The base for this
construction is an externalisation of the thinking faculty and a clear
separation (or dissociation) from the man who suffers, who is consequently
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possessed by that which remains - emotion.
Shelley’s "Love’s philosophy" may be interpreted as a counter-example
to the point made above. In the poem a speaker is attempting to convince the
resistive beloved, a situation not unlike Marvel’s address to the "Coy
Mistress". The argument is constructed drawing on instances of physical
contact from nature and each of the two stanzas culminates in a demanding
rhetorical question:
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
(lines 9 – 16)
The remarkable difference when compared to Marvel, though, is the
fundamental strategy. Whereas Marvel uses a tripartite structure and a
rationalistic syllogistic approach, Shelley relies on an argumentative
conviction based on analogy. The physical nearness present in nature is to
be conveyed to the two lovers. This aspect of love is emphasised by the
poem, which neglects any Platonic ideas of love.
***
Nature is not a basic cultural-anthropological constant per se. It can be
assumed with some justification that nature would exist, even without the
perception of it by human beings (notwithstanding George Berkeley’s views
on the matter). However, as mankind ever since (s)he became conscious of
his/her own existence, has reflected upon his/her relationship to nature or
simply perceived Nature, it has always had its impact on human beings,
which is also reflected in poetry. We shall examine how differently nature has
been mirrored in poetry since the seventeenth century with regard to the
dissociation of sensibility.
A prominent specimen of poetry dealing with nature can be found in the
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works of William Wordsworth58. His poem "I wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
describes in the last stanza a moment of epiphany, a sudden revelation of
beauty in Nature posterior to the actual event of the "sprightly dance" (line
12) of the daffodils. Furthermore, this poem can also be seen as an example
of Wordsworth’s theory of poetry. In the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” he
claimed
[...] that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in
tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of
re-action, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an
emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of
contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself
actually exist in the mind. (Wordsworth, 1988: 297f).
In the present poem the emotion at the time of the event is only hinted at (line
15), however the recollection in tranquillity is explicitly stated:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
(lines 19, 20)
Additionally, the "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" – in the memory
of the speaker – is presented in the last stanza. As pointed out by
Thomas/Ober quoting Philo, the word "vacant" here refers to a state of mind
in which the latter is "[...] ‘carrying its gaze beyond the confines of all
substance discernible by sense,’ reaches out after the intelligible world."
(Thomas/Ober, 1989: 92). To rephrase this interpretation: In the "vacant"
mood, the mind has access to otherwise inaccessible (and perhaps even
incomprehensible) sublime truths, which are part of a supernatural world.
"Vacant" may also mean void of thought and consequently being exposed to
the epistemological power of intuition and Wordsworth was consequently
moving into introspection and meditation (cf. Sanders, 1996: 359).
The prominence of feeling over thought becomes apparent in the
expression "pensive mood" (line 20)59: The poetic process is guided by
58
"Poetry is the image of man and nature." (Wordsworth, 1988: 294). Cf. also: "[Wordsworth] had
chosen to describe 'humble and rustic life', he claimed, because in that condition 'the essential passions
of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity' and because they speak a plainer
and more emphatic language'." (Sanders, 1996: 357; quoting from the "Preface to the lyrical ballads").
59
An expression, which at first glance has some characteristics of an oxymoron, the first word relating
to the intellect (Lat. pensare – to think), the second one to the emotional faculty. The emphasis,
however, is clearly on the mood, i.e. the state of feeling.
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recollection, but lacks any kind of reflection. Instead, "[w]hat he [Wordsworth]
does is to intensify the immediacy of the experience by confining it to his own
person and to dramatize it by heightening the sense of sudden discovery."
(Noyes, 1968: 221). Wordsworth’s aim is the production of an accurate
textual equivalent of the emotion without posterior interference of the ratio.
The human being in his/her interaction with nature is a receptacle for the
sensual input, an observer. The result of this interaction is the creation of
"powerful feelings" in the human soul60.
In the nature poetry of Henry Vaughan a different idea becomes
obvious. As a contrast to Wordsworth, the following lines (15-22) from the
"The Water-fall" (second stanza) shall serve:
Why, since each drop of thy quick store
Runs thither whence it flow'd before,
Should poor souls fear a shade or night,
Who came, sure, from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any more
That what God takes, he'll not restore?
(lines 15-22)
In the first stanza the waterfall is described, in what constructs the setting of
the whole poem. The archetypal rendering of nature is already introduced
here, as "[t]he stream which is dear to the speaker in ‘The Water-fall’ is an
artificially constructed emblem representing temporal life, death, resurrection,
and immortality" (Simmonds, 1972: 17f). In the last line (12) of the first stanza
the mere depiction of this wonder of nature takes a turn – by way of the
observation of and pondering on the "sublime truths" (line 27) of nature towards the philosophical reflection on the transcendental potential of the
human soul from a Christian point of view: "[All] Rise to a longer course more
bright and brave."61 (line 12).
60
Above statements seem to contradict the (daring) heading "Intellectual Daffodils" in Thomas/Ober
(cf. Thomas/Ober, 1989:88). The meaning of intellect is clarified in conjunction with Philo Judaeus’
influence on Wordsworth: "For Philo in the passage we are concerned with, one approaches the
nonphysical through the physical until, at a certain point, the mind leaves the physical and comes into
contact with the nonphysical, the intellectual, the ‘intelligible’." (ibid. 91). It is obvious that
intellectual does not refer to the ratio in this context. Describing the daffodils as being intellectual is
therefore rather misleading and inappropriate.
61
It is noteworthy here that "All rise" instead of "All rises", pointing to individuals rather than to the
natural entities mentioned in the preceding lines.
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This line leads on to the reflective meanderings of the speaker quoted
above. The waterfall is being metaphorically related to human existence and
in contemplation of the tertium comparationis of this conceit, which takes on
the form of rhetorical questions with a syllogistic orientation62, the
transcendence of death as expressed in the Christian faith ("That what God
takes, he’ll not restore" – line 22) is powerfully reaffirmed - although still with
modest subtlety.
The lines which are following express the contrast to Wordsworth’s
appreciation of Nature63. Vaughan’s speaker perceives "[...] sublime truths
and wholesome themes" (line 27) in the "[...] mystical deep streams [...]" (line
28) of the waterfall. The task of Man’s mind is to unravel these subtle hints to
eternal truth(s) – a task, to which (s)he will be enabled by the guidance of
God (cf. line 30). Vaughan thus constructs an intricate link between the
perception of Nature, human transience, and divine redemption. The poem is
a fine example of how "Vaughan [in the context of nature] was entirely
capable of absorbing elements of the amorphous hermeticism of the time into
his fundamentally Christian belief without feeling heretical [...]" (Durr, 1962:
24f) and thus embodies a specific type of unified experience, in this case
relating to theological and ontological thought combined with the feeling
aroused in the perception of nature.
The difference between these two ideas regarding nature also become
obvious in the verbal material employed by the two poets. In Wordsworth we
can observe a prominence of verbs relating to the sensual and visual
perception64: "I saw" (line 3), the chiastic repetition "saw I" (line 11), "I gazed
– and gazed" (line 17, doubled for emphasis and at the same time providing
62
The lines can easily be rephrased using If-Then-constructions of a Modus Ponens.
63
A contrast described by Simmonds thus: "The details of the description, the sequence in which they
appear, and the pattern which that sequence creates, are chosen for their symbolic value, not – as
Wordsworth’s are – as ‘beauteous forms’, chosen for their aesthetic and emotional value in the life of
the poet." (Simmonds, 1972: 18). He concludes pointedly: "All in all, the last place in the world to
look for precedents for Wordsworth’s treatment of nature is the poetry of Henry Vaughan." (ibid.: 19).
64
Seemingly, this notion has occasionally been overlooked: "[...]Wordsworth believed himself to
possess a higher faculty, a mode of perception that was beyond sense. He calls it vision, thereby
allying it less to sense-perception than to dream and reverie, activities of the subconscious or semiconscious mind. He was a great dreamer [...]" (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 324; my italics).
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an iconic expression of the passing of time)65. The absence of a reflective
level is even explicitly expressed in lines 17 and 18:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
(my Italics)
In Vaughan’s poem, on the other hand, the speaker has a "pensive eye"66
(line 14), instead of Wordsworth’s "inward eye" (line 21). Thus, the reflective
and the perceptive faculties are united in Vaughan’s speaker. On a linguistic
level this finds its expresssion by the application of argumentative vocabulary
("since" – lines 15, 19; "so" – line 20), as well as the salient interrogatives
placed at the beginning of the verses (cf. lines 15, 18, 21).
Vaughan’s contemporary Andrew Marvell (both poets were in fact born
the same year – 1621) has articulated a similar unity of sensibility with regard
to the human perception of Nature. In his poem "The Garden", written in light,
enjoyable verses of iambic tetrameters, the solitary speaker wanders about a
garden, contemplating the beauty, enjoying his/her "delicious solitude" (line
16) and ponders on the paradisiacal traces found in Nature:
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious cluster of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarene, and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
(lines 34-38)
In lines 9 and 10 "Fair Quiet" and "Innocence" are addressed as allegorical
figures, even as sisters (cf. line 10). It is significant that the speaker finds
him-/herself in a paradoxical situation, being solitary in the company of the
two aforementioned entities. This already points to a transformed and
elevated state of being, as the paradox as a figure of speech always entails
meaning on a level detached from the literal plain, a notion which is easily
overlooked: "This apostrophe ["Fair quiet]" sounds and is more pompous
than wise. Why should the seeker of fair quiet search for it in, of all places,
65
An observation, which is slightly taken to extremes by Grierson/Smith: "[...] it was only in sight and
hearing that Wordsworth was exceptionally gifted [...]" (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 323).
66
This pensive eye – drawing on the common characteristics expressed in Vaughan’s poem – can
safely be equated with Eliot’s "creative eye", which he described thus: "We need an eye which can see
the past in its place with its definite differences from the present, and yet so lively that it shall be as
present to us as the present. This is the creative eye [...]" (EPM: 77) – if we replace "past" with
"future", which according to the first lines of Eliot's "Burnt Norton" are identical even so.
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busy company of men?" (Klause, 1983:113). In this case, the paradox67
represents a unity of Man with Nature, elaborated on in stanza seven:
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits, and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Wave in its plumes the various light.
(lines 52-56)
The extended simile introduced in line 54 presents the speaker
simultaneously as an observer of his/her soul, as well as being in unity with
Nature, since the soul is portrayed at the same time as a part of the speaker
(albeit removed from it), as well as metonymically incorporating the speaker
(as pars pro toto)68. Simultaneously the soul is a pars in a likewise
metonymical relationship with the toto nature and thus furthermore logically
entails the same relationship regarding the speaker towards nature. The soul
here acts as mediator and perhaps even as a kind of catalytic converter
between speaker and nature. The complex structure of the poet’s mind,
which enables such a construction, is hard, if not impossible, to re-enact in
the post-modern mind. Nevertheless, Sanders neglects Marvell, because
when writing about Traherne he states that "[w]ith the exception of Vaughan,
few writers of this period describe such an intense relationship with nature"
(Sanders, A. 1996: 248). He is, however, correct in noting that nature in
metaphysical poetry is presented as a manifestation of God (cf. ibid.), which
is embodied in the form of the intense relation of soul and nature described
above.
The notions of paradise perceived by the speaker in stanza five (quoted
above) are explicitly pondered on in stanza eight:
Such was that happy garden-state,
When man there walked without a mate:
(lines 57, 58)
Leaving aside the theological debate concerning the Original Sin and the guilt
67
Which is "[...] a happy and absurd paradox, to be enjoyed rather than taken as evidence of
maladjustment." (Rees, 1989: 182).
68
Frank Kermode in his conversation with A.J. Smith points out: "In this sense the whole idea of the
garden, which could mean an interference with nature as well as the exact opposite, the liberation of
man into nature, was very much Marvell’s mind […]" (Kermode, 1976: 69f), which is very much
embodied in the metonymical construction explained above.
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of Eve69, it is important to note for our purpose that in Marvell’s poem
perceptive and reflective passages are alternating. Emotionally charged
exclamations70 and apostrophes71 are taking turns with the presentation of
mythological and scholarly knowledge72 and references to the mind and its
workings (cf. lines 41-44; note the special emphasis, which is laid on the
word "mind", as it is mirrored in the rhyming couplet kind-find in lines 43 and
44 respectively).
The two stanzas of Robert Browning’s poem "Magical Nature" elaborate
on the simple metaphor which equates flower and jewel and transfer this
inspiration gained in the observation of and interaction with nature to the
beloved of the speaker. The short poem shall be quoted in full here:
I
Flower – I never fancied, jewel – I profess you!
Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a flower.
Save but glow inside and – jewel, I should guess you,
Dim to sight and rough to touch: the glory is the dower.
II
You, forsooth, a flower? Nay, my love, a jewel –
Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your prime!
Time may fray the flower-face: kind be time or cruel,
Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at time!
The salient elliptical syntax of the first lines of each stanza hints at an
emotionally aroused state of the speaker, as (s)he is overwhelmed by the
epiphanic realisation of the likeness of flower and jewel. This metaphorical
equation is extended in the second stanza to the speaker’s beloved73, to
which the characteristics of the tertium comparationis (brightness, softness,
preciousness, glow, glory) are transferred. Furthermore, the second stanza
69
"In ‘The Garden’ there is a haunting almost self-mocking consciousness of the Fall [...]" (Rees,
1989:169). It could be said that the mentioning of the expulsion from Paradise is already
foreshadowed in line 40: "[...] I fall on grass", although does not necessarily point to the Fall
(substantive with a capital f as opposed to the verb in lower case).
70
Cf. e.g. "What wondrous life is this I lead!" (line 33) or "How far these beauties hers exceed!" (line
22).
71
Cf. e.g. "Fair trees!" (line 23) or "Fair Quiet" (line 9).
72
Cf. the reference to the myth of Apollo and Daphne or of Pan and Syrinx, (lines 27-32), based on
the slightly more extensive description in the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (cf. ibid. 504-552
and 689-721).
73
However, this extension is ambiguous, as the speaker might still be addressing the actual flower in
the apostrophe of "You, forsooth, a flower?" (line 5).
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raises the topic of transience and the perishability of the flower’s beauty is
likened to the beauty of the beloved ("Time may fray the flower-face: kind be
time or cruel"; line 7). The concise representation of the "magical" metaphor
is not carried over to the depiction of natural transience (or transience in
nature). Therefore these reflections remain on a superficial level. Indeed,
faint traces of metaphysical poetry can be observed in these eight lines – the
appellative diction, a certain reflective moment, emotional intensity – but the
major characteristic, the unity of thought and feeling, is absent74.
A joyful, and yet stimulating, example of modern poetry topicalising
nature is provided with Ted Hughes’ "There came a day." Nature is
represented initially by the absence of the season Summer, because:
There came a day that caught the summer
Wrung its neck
Plucked it
And ate it.
(lines 1-4)
The title reiterates in the framing structure. And the personification in the first
line "There came a day that caught the summer" (line 25) is clarified in the
final stanza: "There came this day and he was autumn." In between these
two points an inquisitive speaker communicates with the cause of his
helplessness regarding the further proceedings relating to trees, sun, birds,
seed and people. Although at first sight these lines convey a playfulness of a
happy tune, a serious alienation of urbanised and industrialised (Wo)Man
from nature is the fundamental motif here. As opposed to the speaker in
Marvell’s "The Garden" discussed above, the speaker in Ted Hughes’ verses
is exposed to severe difficulties in trying to relate to nature, as is obvious, for
instance, from the following lines:
And what shall I do with the birds?
The day said, the day said.
The birds I’ve frightened, let them flit,
I’ll hang out pork for the brave tomtit.
(lines 13-16)
The state of alienation results in a distorted conception of the speaker’s (and
74
With reference to Browning Grierson/Smith would conclude: "But philosophy, pure or applied, is
not poetry until it has been so transmuted as to appeal to the emotions through the senses and the
imagination." (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 420). This appeal is clearly present in the above poem – unlike
the philosophical thought.
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by extension of human being’s) relation to nature (as the flight towards the
south of the migrant birds is to a large extent independent from human
interference) and this state even extends to the speaker’s fellow men: "What
shall I do with the people?" (line 21). The speaker is thus at the mercy of the
personified day, which/who with its insistence and reiteration ("The day said,
the day said.") wittily fools75 the speaker, for instance, into the false belief
that the tomtit will be satisfied with pork (cf. line 16). It can therefore be
concluded that the poem - beneath the surface of the Season Song –
portrays a helpless condition of dissociation.
This conclusion also extends to the relationship of thought and feeling:
The former is present in the underlying implications as described above. The
intuitional feeling, on the other hand, remains on the superficial level of the
"Season Song" (cf. the name of the collection in which this poem was
published). This divergence results in a poem which exposes a disrupted
unified sensibility, as the constituents feeling and thought are present, but
working antagonistically towards diverse ends.
The preceding brief exploration with regard to nature and love already
points to a certain validity of assessing a dissociation of sensibility. In order to
shed more light on the matter and establish its existence even further, I will
examine in detail the topic of death.
3.2.2
A detailed discussion of the poetic
representation of death
Doch der Tote muß fort, und schweigend bringt
ihn die ältere
Klage bis an die Talschlucht,
wo es schimmert im Mondschein:
die Quelle der Freude. In Ehrfurcht
nennt sie sie, sagt: -- Bei den Menschen
ist sie ein tragender Strom. –
R.M. Rilke
“Duineser Elegien”
We shall now examine in detail another basic cultural-anthropological
constant, which eternally determines human existence by terminating it:
death. The "grim reaper" gained an enormous popularity as a topic of poetry
75
The persona of the "day" can easily be imagined wearing the motley dress of a Shakespearian fool,
such as Touchstone, who in Act 3, Scene 2 of As You Like It plays with the helpless (and intellectually
challenged) shepherd Corin in a likewise manner.
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at the beginning of the literary period which is the subject of this paper. And
death has continuously been vivified in the form of various literary
manifestations, the scrutiny of which will prove to be rewarding for the
present purpose. The sociological implications of the dissociation of
sensibility can equally well be studied in guidance of human mortality and its
poetic reflection. Sharp states this point:
Self-consciousness and a tendency toward analysis and
introspection are increasingly evident in late Elizabethan
and Jacobean literature. They accompany the growing
awareness of death in all its forms, from the death of the
individual to the disintegration and death of civilizations.
(Sharp, 1965: 24)
John Donne composed a sequence of six sonnets76, which were summarized
as the "Holy Sonnets: Divine Meditations". In the final sonnet of this collection
"Death be not proud" the speaker directly addresses death and enters into a
communication based on Christian faith and the idea of resurrection. The
sonnet is characterised by rich imagery, argumentative logic and a unity of
pathos (in the original sense) and ratio.
Death is challenged by the speaker, who states that death is not at all
"Mighty and dreadfull" (line 2). This statement is then underpinned, setting
out with the paradoxical proposition "For, those, whom though think’st, thou
dost overthrow, Die not [...]." (lines 3 and 4). In the following lines the ancient
mythological notion of the brothers Hypnos and Thanatos is employed and
rendered in a logical construction, which proves the pleasure derived from
death, cf. lines 5 and 6:
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
The passionate protest against human mortality of this sonnet culminates in
the paradoxical utterance"[...] death thou shalt die." (line 14). The climactic
structure is indicated by the anaphora of lines 10 to 12 ("And"), which is
taken up again in the last line. The intensity and forcefulness is enabled on
the background of the strength of the speaker’s faith, but also by giving
expression to the feeling of the basic thought of the poem, i.e. death is
powerless as it can and will be overcome by resurrection.
76
Presumably in 1609; cf. Gardner, 1966: 83.
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Thematically similar and also equivalent with regard to the speaker’s
situation, the poem "The Dying Christian to His Soul" by Alexander Pope
(1688-1744) yields itself readily to a profitable comparison. As the title points
out the speaker is in a communicative situation, addressing his77 soul at the
moment of his death:
Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
(lines 1 and 2)
A closer look, however, reveals a number of inconsistencies in the target of
the address: In line 5 the speech is directed to nature, line 8 is an angelic,
indirect speech ("Sister spirit, come away!") and lines 17 and 18 are directed
to the grave and to death, respectively.
According to Eliot’s theory, Pope – along with Dryden - would have
been amongst the first "victims" of the dissociation of sensibility and therefore
his poetry would lack a unity of thought and feeling. In the present specimen,
the joy of death – "the bliss of dying" (line 4) - is rooted in the same Christian
faith as Donne’s. However, the thought lacks clarity and consistency and
interestingly enough feelings prevail, which would not be expected from the
"Age of Reason". The emotional passion is obvious in the exclamatory tone,
especially in the last stanza:
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?
(lines 13-18)
The prevalence of feelings at first seems to deviate from the underlying
thesis of the paper. In the general context, on the other hand, the poem can
be seen as a manifestation of the new Baconian quality of poetry. Bacon
states in the second book of The Advancement of Learning:
The use of this fained historie [= poetry] hath been to give
some shadowe of satisfaction to the minde of Man in those
points, wherein the nature of things doth denie it, the world
being in proportion inferior to the soule [...] And therefore it
77
The female form is discarded here, as the gender is indicated in the title. Considering the social
conventions of Pope’s age, however, it may be seen as a generic pronoun.
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[= poetry] was ever thought to have some participation of
divinesse, because it doth raise and erect the Minde, by
submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the Mind;
whereas reason doth buckle and bowe the Mind unto the
nature of things. (Bacon, 1970: 18).
Bacon denies epistemological qualities of poetry, unmistakably differentiates
it from mind and reason and transfers it to the realm of subjectivity. He
admits that poetry manages "[...] to make unlawfull Matches and divorses of
things [...]" (ibid.: 18), however not in the sense of Eliot’s unified sensibility,
but rather as an appeal to fancy and imagination78, where reason does not
rule. This new doctrine had the effect that poetry was "[...] reduced to
catering for ‘delight’ – to providing embellishments which might be agreeable
to the fancy, but which were recognised by the judgement as having no
relation to ‘reality’" (Knights, 1946: 87). Therefore, the fact that the emphasis
of the emotional reaction to the process of dying observed in Pope’s poem
goes along with an expense on the side of ratio is not surprising. It may even
be seen as a Pre-Romantic poem, written in the Age of Reason, indicating to
the sometimes misleading rigidity of assigning strict epochs to literary works.
In contrast to the preceding poems, the source of inspiration for Philip
Larkin’s poem "An Arundel Tomb" is an external one, a grave in the cathedral
of Chichester. The close observation of the stone sculptures and the detail of
the earl’s hand holding the one of the duchess (lines 9-12) induces a calm
contemplation of human transience in a concrete instantiation79. The main
characteristic of death, which is depicted in the poem, is its peremptoriness,
as is clear from the application of "stationary" (line 14), "rigidly" (line 18) or
"helpless" (line 26). These adjectives refer to the statues on the tomb and, by
extension, to the state of the deceased.
In stanza 4 the motionless final rest is contrasted with the passing of
time:
78
Bacon starts out his commentary on the nature of poetry by categorising poetry thus: "The Parts of
humane learning have reference to the three partes of mans understanding, which is the feate of
Learning: History to his Memory, Poesie to his Imagination, and Philosophie to his Reason." (Bacon,
1970, 7)
79
The seemingly romantic gesture is quite misleading, as Swarbrick points out: "But the significance
we attach to that romantic gesture is only one we will upon it. We impute to it the meaning we want it
to have but which was in truth never intended. Their joined hands do not represent the triumph of love
over time [or rather death], but our delusory with that it might be so." (Swarbrick, 1995: 112).
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Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
(lines 19-24)
However, the thought underpinning the poem remains on this superficial level
and refuses to take the reader to any higher plains of reflections. The –
probably intentional - vagueness originates from a lack of a solid foundation
in philosophical thought or religious faith and rises to the surface in the last
stanza:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
(lines 31-36)
The repetition of "almost" reaffirms the blurred nature of the poem, as
"blurred" (line 2) as the faces of the statues. It is hard not to see in this
circumstantial evidence for an uneasiness when facing mortality, as is
furthermore obvious from the withdrawal of the speaker and his/her complete
absence in the verses. The ambivalence is not simply resolved by remarking
that "[o]n one hand love is merely a theoretical possibility; on the other hand
it does, literally, have the last word." (Motion, 1997: 37). On the contrary, the
categorical statement – or even emotional outcry – of the last line seems a
desperate clinging on to an abstract concept manifested in the stone figures
of the tomb, which contradicts the uncertainty of the preceding lines80. The
dissociated and fragmentary nature of the speaker’s reflection are embodied
this way.
John Dryden’s early success "Upon the death of the Lord Hastings", the
first of his poems to be published (in 1649), provides several examples of an
attempt to imitate John Donne81, which lacks the intellectual rigor of Donne’s
80
Which is referred to by Steven Clark as an "[...] unceasing undertow of scepticism." (Clark, 1997:
129).
81
The poem is referred to by Morris as "[...] Dryden’s earlier baroque/metaphysical/Cowleyan elegy
[...]" (Morris, 1997: 174).
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argument. In Dryden’s poem the argumentative structure is only hinted at in
the slightly conceited rhetorical question:
If Merit be Disease, if Vertue death;
To be Good, Not to be; who’d then bequeath
Himself to Discipline? Who’d not esteem
Labour a Crime, Study Self-murther deem?
(lines 9-12)
Disparate entities are "yoked together" here (to use Johnson’s diction),
constructing a sequence of paradoxes, which however are devoid of the
logical clarity found in Donne. Personages and objects from the field of
natural sciences, especially from astronomy, are prevalent in this poem, as is
often the case in Donne’s works. However, they do not serve as a
substantiation of any argument, but rather as embellishing means of
comparison:
Come, learned Ptolomy, and trial make,
If thou this Hero’s Altitude canst take;
But that transcend thy skill; thrice happie all,
Could we but prove thus Astronomical.
Liv’d Tycho now, struck with this Ray, (which shone
More bright I’ th’ Morn then others beam at Noon)
He’d take this Astrolabe, and seek out here
(lines 39-45, bold mine, italics
in the original)
In direct contrast the differences in style become even more clear. The
following lines from John Donne’s "A Valediction: forbidding mourning" shall
serve as a contrast:
So let us melt, and make no noise,
No teare-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,
‘Twere prophanation of our joyes
To tell the layetie our love.
82
(lines 5-8 )
Admittedly, the communicative situation is quite different from the one
portrayed in Dryden’s poem. In comparison to the following lines however, it
becomes noticeable that Dryden attempted to apply the same metaphors:
Grief makes me rail; Sorrow will force its way;
And, Show’rs of Tears, Tempestuous Sighs best lay.
The Tongue may fail; but over-glowing Eyes
Will weep out lasting streams of Elegies.
82
Quoted from: Gardner, 1966: 73.
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(lines 89-92)
The direct contrast shows markedly that Dryden’s poem lacks the soft
argumentative intimacy of Donne’s whispered verses of love and at the same
time represents a direct rendition of an emotional state, on the one hand by
explicitly stating the "grief" (line 89) and on the other hand by the imitated
application of hyperbolic metaphors. The lines quoted above indicate the
difference in poetic quality83. The observation by Grierson and Smith that
Dryden began as a metaphysical poet writing in the "[...] metaphysical style
at its worst [...]" (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 179) is therefore applicable to the
verses quoted above.
Lord Byron’s "And Thou Art Dead, as Young and Fair" exemplifies the
helplessness in the face of death, which is the result of lacking the special
characteristics that John Donne’s mind was obviously endowed with, as
described above. In the poem the suffering lover mourns the premature
passing away of his beloved:
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return’d to Earth.
(lines 1-4)
The speaker acknowledges without any resistance the inevitability of death
already in line 284. In the remainder of the poem (s)he concentrates on the
pain of the loss in a solipsistic way, while attempting the application of
different strategies to find consolation. In the third stanza the love is
portrayed as being eternally conserved due to the departure of the beloved
person (cf. lines 19-27). The speaker then resorts to contemplating the
alternative to the sudden death of his/her beloved:
I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
83
One need not quote the feeble attempt of consoling the widow of the decedent, as expressed in the
last stanza and especially in the last two lines (107 and 108) of Dryden’s poem:
Erect no Mausolaeums: for his best
Monument is his Spouses Marble brest.
84
The same attitude is also expressed, for instance, in line 40 "The leaves must drop away", line 22
"And canst not alter now" (disregarding the idea of resurrection). Also, compare the unalterable state
"[...] where death has set his seal," (line 23) to the dynamic and invincible transubstantiation
expressed in "One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally," of John Donne’s "Death be not proud" (line
13).
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The night that follow’d such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath pass’d,
And thou were lovely to the last,
Extinguish’d, not decay’d;
(lines 46-52)
The perishability of physical beauty metaphorically expressed in these lines
demonstrates the weakness of the speaker in the confrontation with death.
The beloved is reduced to his/her outer appearance, which would have been
subject to decay anyway, and consequently the passing away is subjectively
given a positive turn85.
The poem in its entirety presents a strong expression of the emotion of
suffering. Death is not elevated to an abstract realm, where it can be
attacked and its power banned by the workings of a strong intellect such as
Donne’s or Herbert’s. On the contrary, it remains concrete, an individual loss
and renders the speaker completely helpless, who consequently has to try to
rationalise his/her emotions. Philosophical and theological considerations
and reflections are absent and (presumably unintentionally) the poem – in
spite of its lyrical qualities – tends to give the impression of a caricature of a
desolate character86.
A very similar sentiment is expressed in the obituary "Sonnet on the
death of Richard West", the only sonnet composed by Thomas Gray (17161771). The relationship of the speaker to the decedent is not one of love, but
of friendship and admiration. The deeply felt grief and desolation is even
more profound compared to Byron’s poem, as the speaker yields itself to the
overflow of emotions87. This becomes most obvious in the following lines:
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine,
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire.
85
This rationale indicates strongly the egotism of the speaker, as it can be assumed that this view
would not have been shared by the deceased.
86
Taking into account, however, the last three lines 61-63 of Byron’s work, there actually is a hint
that the poem might not be meant as serious as it seems at first. On the contrary, the poem appears to
be bitterly ironic, namely, when we take the initial letters of these last three lines to indicate the
deceased object of the speaker’s love:
Returns again to me,
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.
87
And thus contradicts the assertion that "[Thomas Gray's] finest verse reflects a taste for meditation
rather than action, for retired contemplation rather than for public jubilation." (Sanders, 1996: 319).
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(lines 7 and 8)
And the final lines:
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in pain.
(lines 13 and 14)
It is, of course, no incident that Wordsworth saw in these lines the only ones
with poetic qualities88. The poem is an early sample of romantic poetry and
as such would appeal to the feeling in the lines quoted, although Gray in his
formal characteristics represented the clarity of a classicist. Thus, there is a
divergence of form and content in the sonnet, which is due to the fact that
"Gray did not utter the cry directly from his heart [as Wordsworth would have
done], but instead elaborated it in invented artificial [classicist] diction."
(Golden, 1988: 38; my square brackets).
Quite contrary to the deep feeling of mourning expressed by Byron’s
and Gray’s speaker in face of the (untimely) death, are the following lines
from Dylan Thomas’ "A Refusal to Mourn the death, by Fire, of a Child in
London" (published in his collection Deaths and Entrances in 1946):
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
(lines 14-18)
The speaker states explicitly his/her unwillingness to degrade the humanity
and the life of the dead child by lamenting her decease in an elegy (in the
limited post-renaissance meaning) or by shedding tears ("[...] my salt seed";
line 11). The conspicuous title instantaneously raises the reader’s suspicion
and imposes the question, which were reasons that lead to the refusal to
mourn (and – in our special case – if it is related to a dissociated sensibility in
any way).
Syntactically, the poem consists of three sentences stretched out over
88
Wordsworth (quoting this sonnet in his preface to the lyrical ballads, cf. Wordsworth, 1988: 286f)
also points to the debate regarding the different purposes of poetic and prosaic languages, another
dissociation, which set in with Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning: "It will easily be perceived that
the only part of this Sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed in Italics [i.e. lines 6-8 and 13,
14] : it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word "fruitless" for
fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of these lines does in no respect differ from that of
prose."
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four stanzas in 24 lines, with enjambments even transgressing the
boundaries of the stanzas in two instances (from line 6 to 7 and from line 12
to 13). To some extent, the paratactic flow of the first two stanzas89 works
against the fragmentation, but is drastically interrupted by the regular length
of the stanzas and by the enigmatic metaphors, which cause the recipient to
stumble. The brokenness of the lines thus indicates the inner strife of a
speaker trying to come to terms with the terrible death of the child
(presumably in the firebombing of London by German planes in World War
II). The despair is furthermore present in the powerful metaphors utilising
religious and Freudian imagery: For instance, the "[...] least Valley of
sackcloth [...]" (line 12) immediately reminds one of the 23rd psalm and the
words "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death [...]" and
the "[...] round Zion of the water bead [...]" evokes images of an embryo in
the womb and its prenatal state of innocence90. The contrast to metaphysical
poetry is obvious:
[Dylan Thomas] thinks in images, and to the imagination
he appeals. So do the Symbolists, though they work by
suggestion rather than presentation, through the ear rather
than the eye. Not so the Metaphysicals, whose conceits
are engendered in the intellect. (Grierson/Smith, 1947:
519)91.
It can therefore be summarised that the speaker is trying to mourn "[t]he
majesty and burning of the child’s death" (line 13) by not mourning it at all.
The deepest feeling presented in the poem is the absence of feeling and
simultaneously its strong presence, a contradictory state, which is therefore
expressed in verbalised emotional fragments. Despite traces of some sort of
faith, it does not result in the strength and willpower, which we observed in
John Donne’s sonnet. Despite the profound compassion ("The mankind of
her going", line 15) and the deep movement of the speaker, which is clearly
present in the poem (cf. Ackerman, 1996: 118), the death of the child is seen
in the context of the inevitability of mortality on a general level, leading to a
89
Cf. the conjunction "and" in lines 3,5,7,9.
90
Cf.: "The water bead and the ear of corn are symbolic primal elements, to which all forms of,
including himself [Thomas] must return." (Ackerman, 1996: 117).
91
A similar view is held by Sanders: "If there is a kinship evident in Thomas's verse it is with the
'difficulty', the emotionalism, the lyric intensity, and the metaphysical speculation (though not the
intellectual rigour) of the school of Donne." (Sanders, 1996: 572)
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fatalism quite contrary to Donne’s expression of death.
This brings us back again to the seventeenth century and another
(admittedly weaker) example of how death was contemplated on in
metaphysical poetry: George Herbert’s poem "Death". The poem directly
addresses death in the initial apostrophe and the speaker enters into a
conversation with an allegorical representation of death: "Death, thou wast
once on uncouth hideous thing" (line 1).
The six stanzas of the poem can be divided into two equal parts, both
consisting of three stanzas each. Both parts depict ontological reflections
regarding the nature of death – past and present. In the first section death is
presented as the material decay of the human body lacking any kind of
transcendentalism with regard to the human soul ("Flesh being turn’d to dust,
and bones to sticks."; line 8). The turn in the argument is distinctly marked in
line 13:
But since our Saviours death did put some bloud
Into thy face;
Thou art grown fair and full of grace,
Much in request, much sought for as good.
(lines 13-16, my italics)
The phrase "Saviours death" used in the address to the abstract entity death
transforms the latter to a concrete instance.
In the last two stanzas the speaker’s argumentation becomes even
more prominent and convincing, reflected in the application of words such as
"For" (line 17) or "Therefore" (line 21), the position of which at the beginning
of the stanza provides them with further attention. Although Herbert’s poem
lacks the powerful exclamatory qualities of Donne’s rendition of the same
thought, the thinking is clearly present. On the other hand, the personification
of death – its endowment with mouth, face, clothes (lines 4, 14, 20) provides the architecture and leitmotif of the poem, which enables the reader
to emotionally relate to the termination of human life. The death of Christ
redefined death in its entirety. Herbert ventures to provide the emotional
equivalent of this thought in his poem "Death".
This is a quality which is absent in Thomas Moore’s (1779-1852) "’Tis
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the Last Rose of Summer"92. The inclusion of this poem in this chapter on the
poetic representation of death is justified insofar, as it may be viewed as an
allegorical depiction of the transience of the human race and the individual,
who – just like the roses – in the end lie "scentless and dead" (line 16).
The speaker contemplates the solitary last rose in the first stanza, trying
to comfort the rose empathetically in the second stanza. A nexus between
the traditional (and dead) metaphor for beauty and love and the individual
human being is created in line 17: “So soon may I follow.”
The connection established here works on the same level. It is not an
abstraction, but a horizontal extension of the initial observation. Although an
attempt to derive a general truth from the individual experience is faintly
visible in the last stanza, the unimpeded rhythmical flow (as neat as it is)
suggests a false easiness to the reader (or listener):
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
(lines 18-22)
Only the rhetorical question in the last two lines and the prominent
placement of the adjective "bleak" (which stands out due to the "squeaking"
interruptive phonemes /i:k/) hint at an unresolved question:
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
(lines 23, 24)
Emotionally appealing, the poem falls short of including any theological or
philosophical notions, which is especially obvious when contrasting it with
Herbert’s work discussed above. It is a fine example of Irish Romanticism93
and of a dissociated sensibility, emphasising the emotional faculty of the
human being.
92
In discussing this poem I have chosen a text-immanent (or intrinsic) approach. This will shed some
new light - or darkness - on the poem by deviating from traditional interpretations, which deal with
musical qualities of the text in the context of Irish folk music. Cf. e.g. Vaughn, W.E. (ed.), A New
History of Ireland. Vol. V (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989) pp. 486f.
93
Which saw a renaissance in the early 19th century, despite or because of the failed uprising of 1803,
lead by Robert Emmet. Cf. Boyce, George D., Nationalism in Ireland (London et al.: Routledge,
1982) p. 236.
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Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) shows explicit traces of a dissociated
sensibility. In his poem "The Dead Man Walking" (written in 1896) death is
not an abstract entity, nor does it occur in the form of a concrete instance.
The verses rather topicalise death in life, as a gradual and inevitable
movement towards the end, which is enforced in this case by biographical
events of the speaker. The speaker characterises him-/herself as a hollow
thing, more dead than alive:
I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.
(lines 5-8)
(S)he dwells in nostalgia and reminiscence of youth (stanza 5) and in
retrospect identifies a number of incidents which have enforced the process
of turning into a "pulseless mould": The death of friends (lines 25-28) and the
transformation of love into hate (lines 29, 30) are examples for such
incidents. Stanza 6 describes the speaker’s relation to the entirety of
mankind:
But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.
(lines 21-24)
The optimistic attempts to relate to the rest of mankind have failed, as the
speaker is shudderingly repelled by the goals of other men. The word "goal"
is highly ambiguous here and may refer to individual aims in life, such as the
eternal strife for wealth and power. It may also be interpreted as referring to a
more generic and common aim of mankind, i.e. the advancement of
civilization, or may even refer to death itself, as the shared "goal" of every
man and woman.
It is important to note that the speaker fails to provide a definite reason
– apart from the collection of incidents - for the deterioration witnessed
throughout the years. The basic thought of the poem is presented roughly,
underpinned by single episodes. Uncertainty prevails:
There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
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When silent seasons inched me
On to this death ....
(lines 13-16)
And similarly:
And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
(lines 33, 34)
The vagueness of an unfathomable process of decay underlying human
existence is forcefully expressed, most remarkably not as a physical process,
but as a decay of the soul94. Feelings are to a large extent excluded from the
poem and there are no direct representations of feelings, with the exception
of stanza 5, in which the fire of youth is described:
-- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.
(lines 17-20)
Doubtful and curious questions mingle with the factual statement of
biographical events of the speaker’s life in the clear depiction of a shattered
soul, unable to react emotionally to its surroundings and powerless in the
hands of fate. It is a striking contrast to the rising up against death of the
speakers in the poems by Donne and Herbert discussed above – a protest of
which the hollow95 and dissociated self of Hardy’s speaker is incapable.
In G.M. Hopkins’ (1844-1889) poem "Spring and Fall" the speaker
addresses a young girl, who cries over the falling leaves in autumn. Her
perspective is an unsullied one ("fresh thoughts", line 4) and she has not yet
grown accustomed to the passing of the seasons and the decay in autumn.
The dying leaves are a metaphor, on the one hand representing the
transience of mankind, on the other hand also the Fall of Man96. We will
concentrate on the former.
The poem is rather unique as it is concerned with the primal insight of a
94
Although this word is never mentioned in the poem, the decay is obviously a psychological process.
95
The speaker of Hardy's "The Dead Man Walking" can be seen to be a paradigm of Eliot's hollow
men; cf. T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men", in: Collected Poems 1909-1962 (New York et al.: Harcourt
Brace & Company, 1991) p. 67ff.
96
As accounted for in Genesis. Hopkins was a Catholic priest, which is why this notion shall not go
unmentioned here.
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child into the nature of death and the passing of all physical existence. The
contrast to the speakers mature perception of the very same process is
elaborated in the following lines:
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
(lines 5-8)
These lines are an interior monologue, in which the speaker realises the
child’s sorrow and connects to it on a personal level by reflecting on the
deadening towards the fundamental pain of the human condition – a pain
which is still intensely felt by the little child. In simple words the speaker tries
to explain the reason for her grief:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
(lines 14, 15)
Thus, he passes on to her the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, so to speak. It
is noteworthy that the speaker relates to the child on an emotional and not on
an intellectual level, as an older person would normally do, explaining the
seasons: "The speaker implicitly modifies the didactic ‘answers’ he finds by
grounding them in the moving relationship between him and the child. That
is, the poem formulates with clarity the answers to the question it raises [...]"
(Motto, 1986: 122). The poem can be interpreted as an appeal to emotional
empathy towards the child’s grief and – by extension – all children’s problems
of growing up and adopting to the inexplicable course of nature. In order to
achieve this, the faculty of feeling is intentionally separated by the speaker
from the intellect, from didactic thought97 and consequently Bloom remarks
that Hopkins’ "[...] more properly poetic anguish is wholly Romantic [...] for it
derives from an incurably Romantic sensibility desperately striving not to be
Romantic, but to make a return to a lost tradition." (Bloom, 1986a: 1).
A comparable communicative situation is presented in Algernon
Swinburne’s (1837-1909) poem "What is death?". The speaker is watching a
picture or drawing of death and is confronted with the curiosity of a seven
97
As Motto points out: "For all its mercy, for all its human-directed tenderness, "It is Margaret you
mourn for" yet looks down at the child, consciously bending the sign and the voice saying it toward
the object, the other." (Motto, 1986: 146).
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year old child who wonders
Once what stronge thing this might be,
Gaunt and great of limb.
(lines 6, 7)
In contrast to Hopkins’ poem, the speaker merely answers the question with
the designation of the abstract entity "Death" and thus does not answer the
question at all. (S)he is confronted with the child’s lack of understanding and
his incessant inquisitiveness. It is obvious from the lines of the second
stanza, which describe the child’s innocence as "[...] some sweet fleet thing’s
whose breath / Speaks all spring though nought it saith [...]" (lines 10, 11),
that the speaker has failed to relate to the child’s world and his level of
comprehension. Therefore the child has to ask again:
Glorious with its seven year’s grace,
Asking – What is death?
(lines 13, 14)
In this poem a contrast can be diagnosed between the intellectualised world
of the grown up speaker and the curiosity of the child’s world. It is important
to note that the question of the final line is never answered in the poem, as
the speaker is not able to provide a sufficient explanation for the abstract
concept "death".
From the discussion of the former two poems it might be deduced that
the phylogenetical process of a dissociating sensibility – regarding the
development of the species - is also reflected on an ontogenetical level, i.e.
in the development of the individual98. The two poems represent two rough
courses this development might take: towards the emotional faculty of
empathy or the intellectual field of abstract entities.
It can be assumed that Eliot in his praise for the qualities of
metaphysical poetry would have attempted himself to embody the unified
sensibility of thought and feeling in his own poetry. A close examination of
"Whispers of Immortality", which suits the guiding principle of the current
98
However, this slightly far-fetched hypothesis would require developmental-psychological studies
which can only be hinted at here. The biological terms have to be read metaphorically, of course, as
we are dealing with a socio-cultural phenomenon.
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chapter, is therefore recommendable99.
Various literary references occur throughout the first half of the poem
and the emphasis is laid on the relationship of Eliot’s literary predecessors to
the mortality of the human race. The Renaissance dramatist John Webster
(1580-1625) and the poet John Donne are explicitly referred to. In line 5 a
seeming reference to Wordsworth100 endows the poem with an ironic turn. In
these first three stanzas the stage is set and the reader is drawn into an
absurd and perhaps even morbid world. The feeling created is equivalent to
the one experienced when watching a fusion of one of the darker paintings
by Hieronymus Bosch with one by René Magritte101.
The first four stanzas can be viewed as a homage to Donne and
Webster, putting forth the special qualities of their writing as embodying a
unified sensibility of thought and feeling, of the mind and the body.
Interestingly enough, this homage is a descriptive one. Eliot does not
manage here to represent the mindset he admired on a poetic level in his
own writing:
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
(lines 9-16)
The poem takes a different turn, though, in the climactic rendition of
metaphysical qualities in the last stanza. Here, Eliot elevates the homage to
the writers and the praise of the Russian ballet dancer to a philosophical level
in a conceited way, reminiscent of a (modernized) version of Donne’s diction:
And even the Abstract Entities
99
The poem would yield itself more readily as an illustration of two other key concepts in Eliot’s
poetics – Impersonality and Tradition. Traces of a unified sensibility can however be extracted.
100
"Daffodil bulbs instead of balls" (cf. the discussion of "I wandered lonely as a cloud" in section
3.2.1.2).
101
In case the reader may be puzzled by this comparison, I would like to remind him or her of what
Wordsworth wrote in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads: "We are fond of tracing the resemblance
between Poetry and Painting, and, accordingly, we call them Sisters [...]" (Wordsworth, 1988: 287).
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Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
(lines 29-32)
Following the admiration of Grishkin’s sensual-emotional qualities102 the
speaker (who remains invisible except for the short occurrence in line 9)
observes a more abstract quality in her impression, thus unifying in the
subjective perception sense and thought, lust and philosophy. The two
concluding lines are marked by an ambiguity of contrast, introduced with the
conjunction "But". The deictic pronoun "our" allows for two interpretations: a)
It may refer to the speaker and the dancer, which would lead on to reading
the homophone "lot" as the fate of the couple. Or b) "our" refers to those
persons – including the speaker – whose charm is not circumambulated by
"Abstract Entities" and who therefore lack a unity of experience in their
sensibility. In this case, "lot" would refer to the group of such people.
Furthermore, Eliot constructs a contrast to the present existence by the
introduction of the contemporary ballet dancer103.
The poem culminates in a paradoxical utterance: The abstract metaphysics are endowed with physics, i.e. the corporeal warmth, which
represents as concisely as possible the unity Eliot was concerned with in
1921 – even if limited to only one stanza in this case104.
3.2.3
A
Exceptions to the rule – Keats, Baudelaire
and Rilke
s is natural in literary studies, exceptions have to be taken into
account when trying to establish a rule, in order to avoid
sweeping generalisations and not to fall into the trap of an over-reduction of
102
Cf. for instance the "friendly bust" of line 19 or the comparison to the "Brazilian jaguar" in lines 21
and 25.
103
Williamson points out: “In contrast we are much possessed by Grishkin. [...] possessed by flesh we
take refuge in abstractions to conceive any life beyond the physical. [...] Unlike Webster and Donne,
we have to separate thought and sense; otherwise living sense would conquer our feeble metaphysics.
“ (Williamson, 1984: 96f).
104
Scofield judges more generously in favour of Eliot and applies this assertion to the whole poem:
"There is a fusion of thought and feeling in the figurative language, but it is a fusion which images a
knowledge beyond and unassuageable by the physical [...] the poem demonstrates ‘a unified
sensibility’ of a different kind – the thought (of death) becoming feeling, rather than vital feeling
becoming thought." (Scofield, 1988: 97; italics original).
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complexity. Eliot himself pointed to this fact when he wrote with regard to the
"[...] quality of sensuous thought, or of thinking through the senses, or of the
senses thinking [...]" (IP: 23) that there "[...] is a trace of it only in Keats" (IP:
23), to whom we will consequently turn our attention.
The intellectual power and emotional intensity of Keats’ (1795-1821)
poetry may be observed, for instance, in the Shakespearian sonnet "When I
have Fears that I may Cease to Be." As the opening line already indicates,
the poem is an individualised contemplation on the perishability of Man and
Man’s consciousness thereof. The speaker (who can safely be equated with
the poet at least as far as the vocation is concerned) intensely feels on the
one hand the limited existence, and on the other hand the chance and the
need to perform great deeds, as expressed, for example in the first stanza:
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
(lines 1-4)
The temporal construction ("When") of this sentence is repeated twice more
and exemplifies how the knowledge of mortality intrudes into a) poetic
creation (stanza 1), b) poetic reflection (stanza 2) and c) poetic love (stanza
3). Thus, the omnipresence of transience is portrayed. The speaker
perceives this inevitable component of the conditio humana and in this
perception "thinks" (line 7) and "feels" (line 9), i.e. the same stimulus is
replied to with both the emotional and the intellectual faculty, albeit
alternatively and not simultaneously.
On the other hand, Eliot argued that in Keats there is only a trace of this
unified sensibility, implying that there are traces of dissociation as well. In the
present poem this can be observed in the phrase of the "faery power of
unreflecting love" (lines 11,12), which negates reflective qualities of love.
In the final stanza of this poem a possible way of coming to terms with
death is presented:
—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
(lines 12-14)
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The above mentioned intrusion of the awareness of mortality into life is
reacted to with a retreat into solitude and intense thinking, the remarkable
result of which is the annihilation of the importance of "Love and Fame" –
exactly the importance which has been depicted so intensely in the preceding
stanzas105. This retreat and the thinking may be interpreted as constituents to
the process of the Keatsian "Soul-making"106 and, if we grant that the
speaker here reacts to mortality with a unified sensibility, then this particular
sensibility may furthermore be seen in the light of Keatsian philosophy as a
prerequisite, a conditio sine qua non, to transcend the "Vale of Soul-making",
where "[...] the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways."107
Another idea regarding the connection between a unified sensibility and
the Keatsian mind shall only be hinted at here. In a letter to his brothers
George and Thomas Keats written in 1818, John Keats defines his wellknown term "negative capability", by which he means: "[...] when a man is
capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubt, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason" (Trilling, 1951: 92). The careful balance of
such a man’s (or woman’s) state of mind is constituted, I believe, by
cautiously weighing the various epistemological faculties of philosophical,
scientific and aesthetic (or artistic) insight against each other, without giving
undue prominence to either of them. It seems plausible to assume that a
unified sensibility, which encompasses the said faculties, would immensely
contribute to such a negative capability108 - or vice versa.
In the Clarke Lectures Eliot points to another exception from his theory
105
Cf. also Bate’s remark: "The close of the sonnet ... picks up something of the youthful ideal of
'disinterestedness' and the thought of 'staid philosophy' with which he hopes to share his commitment
to the 'hot lyre'." (Bate, 1963: 291).
106
In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, John Keats writes: "Call the world if you Please 'The
vale of Soul-making'. Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest
terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose
of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say 'soul making' Soul as distinguished
from an Intelligence-There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions--but they are not
Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. I[n]telligences are atoms of
perception --they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God --how then are Souls to
be made?" (Trilling, 1951: 215; italics original).
107
Trilling, 1951: 215.
108
This dynamic state of mind is adequately expressed by Smith: "The mode of reasoning [of Donne's
argument] is characteristic. Donne calls in a variety of circumstances in the world, weighing one area
of concern against another so that we may appraise the present claim in relation to a whole range of
unlike possibilities, which might even nullify one another [...]" (Smith, 1991: 109).
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of dissociation of sensibility: "[...] I find a third period, not so clear, much more
complex, but representing what seem to me distinctly 'metaphysical'
manifestations. It's parent is Baudelaire, it existed in France between 1870 1890 [...]" (VMP 59)109. It seems to me that the manifestations mentioned
here by Eliot are represented especially in the use of the conceit by
Baudelaire, as we will see in the following examples from Les Fleurs Du Mal.
The "first of seers, king of poets, a true god"110 employed this distinctly
metaphysical figure of speech at various points in his poetry, which is also
highlighted by Maxwell:
The poet, experiencing the creations of the mind with as
great an immediacy, as great an impact as he does
material happenings - in the manner of a child - must in his
poetry integrate the two kinds of experience in the way
suggested here." (Maxwell, 1969: 73).
One example for the use of conceited language is the sonnet "The Fountain
of Blood", in which the stream of blood is hyperbolically exaggerated and
applied to express enormous pains of love:
It seems sometimes my heart pumps out a flood,
As would a fountain sobbing rhythmically,
[...]
It flows, like an arena full of dead,
And turns the paving stones into islands,
To quench the thirst of every creature, and
To dye, across the city, nature red.
(lines 1;2; 5-8
111
)
The extraordinary flow of the blood is reminiscent of Donne’s descriptions of
weeping, as presented for instance in "A Nocturnall upon S. Lucie’s day":
[...] Oft a flood
109
The other two periods are the metaphysical poetry of England and the Italian Trecentisti, foremost
Dante and the Divina Commedia (cf. VMP 59).
110
Rimbaud on Baudelaire: "'le premiere voyant, roi des poètes, un vrai Dieu'" (Rimbaud, Arthur.
Lettres du Voyant. Gérald Schaeffer (ed.), (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 1975) p. 143).
111
In the original: "La Fontaine Du Sang"
Il me semble parfois que mon sang coule à flots,
Ainsi qu'une fontaine aux rythmiques sanglots.
..
A travers la cité, comme dans un champ clos,
Il s'en va, transformant les pavés en îlots,
Désaltérant la soif de chaque créature,
Et partout colorant en rouge la nature.
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Have wee two wept, and so
Drownd the whole world, us two; [...]
(lines 22-24
112
)
A more innovative conceit is employed in "Spleen (IV)", in which the
hopelessness of the situation is described comparing hope to a trapped bat:
When the earth becomes a damp dungeon,
When Hope, like a bat it seems,
Beats the walls with its timid pinions
And bumps its head against the rotted beams;
(lines 4-8
113
)
Further examples can be found in "The Pipe" ("La pipe"), "Cats" (Les chats")
and "Morning Twilight" (“Le crepuscule du matin"), which for the sake of
brevity shall only be mentioned here en passant. However, distinct
representations of a unified sensibility – be it of thought and feeling or
otherwise – are hardly observable in Baudelaire’s poetry114. Perhaps the
unity manifested itself more prominently in the French symbolists following
Baudelaire, but this would require more detailed examinations than could
possibly be provided here. A unity of Manichaen dichotomies which is
strikingly manifest in Baudelaire’s work are the unities of good and evil, of
beauty and ugliness, of love and hate.
A further exception to the general development of an increasing
dissociation of sensibility may be found in the German poetry of Rainer Maria
Rilke (1875-1926). The specific kind of the union of two lovers so often found
in Donne’s verses is equally present, for instance, in Rilke’s "Liebes-Lied".
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.
(lines 8-13)
112
Gardner, 1966: 71f.
113
In the original: "Spleen"
Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide
Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;
114
Interestingly Eliot has written an essay on Baudelaire four years after having made above
statements in his Clarke Lectures and failed to include the notion of a unified sensibility or such
metaphysical qualities (cf. "Baudelaire" in SE: 419-430).
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The souls of the lovers are vibrating in unison and – withstanding the
speaker’s intentions to suppress this state – the unity is too intense and too
miraculous to be disrupted. The presence of an external entity described
here adds a notion, which is not to be found in Donne. Furthermore, the
application of the conceit can also be observed in Rilke's poetry, for instance
in "Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes.", when Orpheus’ lament is described as not
only encompassing "[...] der Seelen wunderliches Bergwerk" (line 1) during
the ascend from Hades, but constituting an entire world of mourning:
Die So-geliebte, daß aus einer Leier
Mehr Klage kam als je aus Klagefrauen;
Dass eine Welt aus Klage ward, in der
Alles noch einmal da war: Wald und Tal
Und Weg und Ortschaft, Feld und Fluß und Tier;
Und dass um diese Klage-Welt, ganz so
Wie um die andre Erde, eine Sonne
Und ein gestirnter stiller Himmel ging,
ein Klage-Himmel mit entstellten Sternen :
Diese So-geliebte.
(lines 47-56)
In this conceit the deeply felt emotion is expressed using elements from the
material world. The effect is emphasised by increasing the physical
dimensions and the extent of these elements, from forest to the stars, from
small parts of the planet earth to the entire universe. Geography, geophysics
and astronomy all contribute to an intense overall effect, to depict Orpheus’
suffering and at the same time demonstrate its omnipresence.
As will be demonstrated, these deviations form the general tendency of
a dissociating sensibility do not contradict the assessment of this
development. Exceptions are a natural phenomenon in literary studies. Valid
generalisations are nevertheless possible, as we will see in chapter 3.4 An
interpretative principle: The poet and the pendulum - four ideal types.
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3.3
F
Intermediate summary – findings so far
rom the examinations above of poetry dealing with love, nature and
death, Eliot’s theory of a dissociation of sensibility seems to be plausible.
A disintegration of the human mind and the poems, which are its
manifestations, can especially be assumed with regards to the
conceptualisations of thought/ratio on the one hand and emotion/feeling on
the other hand. This process leads foremost to a dissociated state of the
individual psyche. Eliot’s concept can furthermore be extended to comprise
additional binary oppositions, as has been hinted at. One of the most
interesting results of the investigations above is that seemingly the
consciousness of this dissociated state has increased in modernist times,
although the consciousness regarding the socio-historical process, which
lead to this state, is still not very distinct.
The following chapter attempts to structure the period under
examination in order to make it more tangible. The methodological basis for
such a generalisation will briefly be explained.
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3.4.1 Max Weber's theory of the ideal type
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3.4
An interpretative principle: The poet and the
pendulum - four ideal types
While I gazed directly upward at it (for its
position was immediately over my own) I
fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant
afterwards the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep
was brief, and of course slow. I watched it for
some minutes somewhat in fear, but more in
wonder.
Edgar Allen Poe,
"The Pit and the Pendulum"
I
n order to structure the results of the investigation so far, it is beneficial to
resort to a methodological concept from social science: the ideal type115,
as developed by Max Weber. Roughly speaking, it will be demonstrated how
the pendulum of sensibility, once its motion had been triggered, swung from
one extreme point to the other, until it lost its course, seemingly swinging into
all directions simultaneously – or trying to do so.
3.4.1
T
Max Weber's theory of the ideal type
he ideal type is a heuristic tool and was conceptualised in opposition to
interpretative and causal-analytical approaches, as well as in opposition
to the "Weltsystem-Schule" (cf. Kalberg, 2001: 121)116. It is a theoretical
construct, which serves to build and formulate hypotheses: "[...] der
idealtypische Begriff [...] ist keine ‚Hypothese’, aber er will der
Hypothesenbildung die Richtung weisen. Er ist nicht eine Darstellung des
Wirklichen, aber er will der Darstellung eindeutige Ausdrucksmittel
verleihen." (Weber, 1988: 190). Ideal-typical constructions are therefore
based on and derived from empirical data, but do not comprise such data. It
is important to note that "[in] seiner begrifflichen Reinheit ist dieses
Gedankenbild nirgends in der Wirklichkeit empirisch vorfindbar [...]" (Weber,
1988: 191), i.e. it is not the formulation of merely classificatory concepts (cf.
Weber, 1988: 195), but an abstraction from such "real" concepts. In other
115
The term was borrowed by Max Weber from Georg Jellinek (cf. Albrow, 1990: 151).
116
The concept is originally based in Kantian philosophy: "The Kantian structure of thought was put
to a different use [by Weber] and resulted in a formulation which remains the most important single
account of the nature of social science concept construction." (Albrow, 1990: 150).
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words, the ideal type is "[...] a complex of characteristics brought together
into a consistent whole for the purpose of analysis" (Albrow, 1990: 153).
So how does one proceed when constructing ideal types? The point of
departure always is empirical data. By means of extrapolating those aspects
of the data, which are the focus of interest, the ideal type is gained. Weber
describes the process in detail:
[Der Idealtypus] wird gewonnen durch einseitige
Steigerung eines oder einiger Gesichtspunkte und durch
Zusammenschluß einer Fülle von diffus und diskret, hier
mehr, dort weniger, stellenweise gar nicht, vorhandenen
Einzelerscheinungen,
die
sich
jenen
einseitig
herausgehobenen Gesichtspunkten fügen, zu einem in
sich einheitlichen Gedankenbilde. (Weber, 1988: 191).
That is to say, certain factual characteristics are generalized to such an
extent that they yield to be real and are transformed into an ideal model. This
model in turn can be applied to formulate hypotheses, which can be tested
against further empirical data. It is correct that the ideal type is a
simplification, but – if carefully constructed – it is not an over-simplification.
On the contrary, "[...] Idealtypen [heben] jene Aspekte des empirischen
Falles hervor, die für den Forscher von besonderem Interesse sind. Auf diese
Weise gewinnt der Forscher so mittels ‚Vereinfachung’ einen ‚Zugriff’ auf die
empirische Wirklichkeit." (Kalberg, 2001: 122). Thus, distinguishable models
can be defined, which are set apart from reality, but which help to guide the
scientific research into a particular development or state of society117. During
this research representations of the ideal type may be encountered as an
ideal of the society at a certain point in time118.
Ideal types are therefore applicable in diachronic research, which due to
developments in the theory of science can no longer be seen as the
gathering of objective factual material. Extrapolation and abstraction help to
117
Thus, they help to understand more clearly such developments or states: "Als heuristische Hilfen
ermöglichen diese Modelle wiederkehrender Handlungsorientierung, so wie die Idealtypen allgemein,
dem Forscher den Zugriff und das Verstehen einer amorphen und unaufhörlich fließenden
Wirklichkeit und unterstützen die klare begriffliche Erfassung des untersuchten besonderen Falls oder
der untersuchten Entwicklung." (Kalberg, 2001: 133).
118
Weber notes: "Ein Idealtypus bestimmter gesellschaftlicher Zustände, welcher sich aus gewissen
charakteristischen sozialen Erscheinungen einer Epoche abstrahieren läßt, kann – und dies ist sogar
recht häufig der Fall – den Zeitgenossen selbst als praktisch zu erstrebendes Ideal oder doch als
Maxime für die Regelung bestimmter sozialer Beziehungen vorgeschwebt haben." (Weber, 1988:
196).
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come to terms with a history, which has been written under the condition of
discursive patterns and prejudice. Weber points out: "Wer auf dem
Standpunkt steht, dass die Erkenntnis der historischen Wirklichkeit
‚voraussetzungslose’ Abbildung ‚objektiver’ Tatsachen sein solle oder könne,
wird [diesen Gedankengebilden] jeden Wert absprechen." (Weber, 1988:
192).
3.4.2
A
Relevance for and application in literary
studies
lthough the concept of the ideal type originates from the
economical and social studies of Weber and thus represents the
"[...] essential nature of social scientific method" (Albrow, 1990: 151), its
application is possible and rewarding in literary studies also. Thwaite hints to
the direction this application can take: "Literary periods like archaeological or
historical periods, have been - and continue to be - invented, in a sense, as
part of a human need to impose order on undifferentiated places, people, artworks, ideas." (Thwaite, 1978: 1). Indeed, the concept of the ideal type is
regularly employed in literary studies, although not always consciously and
explicitly.
In the following section I will attempt to construct four ideal types in
order to structure the literary period, which is the focus of this paper. The
application of the concept of the ideal type leads in this case to models of
literary development, which are used for the formulation of hypotheses119.
In the application of the ideal type two additional characteristics of the
concept are important to note:
a)
As the ideal type is an abstraction not to be found in reality, it
can not be falsified by being tested against reality120. However,
competing ideal types may be constructed, which are based on
the same data and focus on the same interest, but which might
119
This proceeding is one method of applying the ideal type in order to derive a "[...]
Hypothesenbildendes Entwicklungsmodell [...]" (Kalberg, 2001: 166), which is constituted by limited
analytical generalizations and does not serve to forecast further processes – unlike theories in natural
sciences (cf. Kalberg, 2001: 166).
120
Cf: "Durch eine Überprüfung an der Realität widerlegbar ist ein Idealtyp nicht, da er, recht
verstanden, nicht Realität beschreiben soll." (Weiß, 1975: 76).
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be more accurate.
b)
Furthermore, subtypes and mixed types can be developed from
existing ideal types to give a more complex and detailed
account of reality (cf. Kalberg, 2001: 127).
The following investigations can only serve as a starting point to more
detailed examinations regarding the ideal typical construction of a literary
history, which depicts the development of the dissociated sensibility.
***
From the examination of the poems in chapter 3.2 above (and of other
poems not explicitly referred to in the present paper) it can be deemed
reasonable with some degree of plausibility that the period, which has been
examined, could be separated into four ideal typical periods, in which major
shifts in the history of ideas have taken place. For the moment these four
periods shall be referred to as IT1, IT2, IT3 and IT4 respectively, in order to
avoid premature identification with established epochs of literary history. In
the following section I will try to elaborate and extrapolate some
characteristics of the investigated poetry to construct these ideal types. The
pendulum of the ideas of poetics swung back and forth between these
extreme poles.
As we have seen, metaphysical poetry, which was the point of
departure, presents us with "[...] the magical fusion of wit and passion [...]"
(Grierson/Smith, 1947: 509). We can adapt Eliot’s analysis regarding the
unified sensibility as an objective account of literary history. Therefore, in IT1poetry the emphasis is on the expression of a unity of thought and feeling, or
even – more generally speaking – a unity of different binary concepts. In
Rajnath’s words:
In a typical metaphysical poem disparate experiences are
a fused; in other words, images quite remote from one
another are brought in conjunction. Metaphysical imagery,
drawn as it is from different spheres of knowledge,
demands this on the part of the poet. (Rajnath, 1979: 154;
my italics121).
The expression of fusing disparate experiences might be observed in
121
Apparently, Rajnath has described here unknowingly the ideal type.
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different forms of manifestation, for instance on a stylistic level (conceit) or a
philosophical/conceptual level (the body feeling and thinking). In fact, even
such recent ideas regarding the opposition of content-form or ideas-structure,
which supposedly constitute a work of literature or art, would be meaningless
to IT1. The attitude which leads to the production of such kind of poetry is a
synthesising one and not an analytical one. Donne’s poetry comes close to
IT1, as in his verses he uses the "[...] paradox as a method of analysis."
(Sanders, 1996: 197). Sanders continues:
The often heterodox and destabilized world of Donne's
poetry is held together both by a transcendent and
almighty Creator and by a God-like poet who shows his
power by enforcing conjunctions and exploring correlatives
and analogies. (Sanders, 1996: 198).
Therefore, Donne can serve as a starting point for a collection of
characteristics of IT1, as the features commonly associated with Donne’s
poetry and metaphysical poetry in general, can be isolated, extrapolated and
transferred to IT1. The most prominent among them are
•
being "[...] extremely sensitive to the unreal and the
unreasonable [...]" (Sharp, 1965: x),
•
"extravagance, obscurity and harshness" (Sharp, 1965: xi f),
•
to "[...] balance argument with trope, devotional intensity with
worldly wit." (Bloom, 1986b: viii),
•
an "assimilable whole", created from book learning and emotion
(cf. Sharp, 1965: 21) and
•
a "[...] capacity for revealing hidden and unexpected connections
between different parts of life [...]" (Sharp, 1965: 55);
All these elements are grounded in an "[...] enviable unity of
consciousness [which] was due in part, or perhaps rather, was possible,
because Donne was still living in the era of universal knowledge." (White,
1966: 83). The mentioned characteristics would be united in IT1 in their
utmost purity.
***
The seventeenth century was exposed to fundamental changes in
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Western philosophical thought. These changes also had their effect on poetry
and eventually lead to a paradigm shift, which brought forth the second
ideal type IT2122. The currents of philosophy have already been mentioned
above, namely the Cartesian/Baconian ideas
123
. They can roughly be
described as firstly the mind-body split and secondly the separation of poetry
from philosophy. The advance of natural science went along with a neglect of
poetry as an epistemological faculty:
The forces which affected poetry during the seventeenth
century and which are responsible for the difference are,
individually pretty well delineated. There is the decay of
that blending of mood and vision which we call Jacobean
sensibility, there is the rise of rationalism, the new concept
of nature, the advance in science, the increasing faith in
literary rules, and the change in the conception of
imagination and wit. (Sharp, 1965: xf)
Two prominent transitional figures, which amplified and advanced the change
were Abraham Cowley and to some extent also John Milton, who can be
regarded as a spokesman of indigenous English rationalism (cf. Orr, 1998:
7). The former is generally associated – perhaps incorrectly – with the
metaphysical poets. He enthusiastically appreciated the advancement of
science and devoted one of his Pindarique Odes to the Royal Society,
founded in 1660, in which he praises Bacon’s new thought thus124:
Bacon at last, a mighty Man, arose,
Whom a wise King and nature chose
Lord Chancellor of both their Lawes,
And boldly undertook the injur’d Pupils cause.
(lines 37-40)
Bacon has broke that scare-crow Deitie;
(line 59)
Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last,
The barren wilderness he past,
Did on the very Border stand
122
Sharp describes the effect of this change thus: "What had poetry lost by discarding the
metaphysical style? It had lost its subtlety, its indirection, its hidden layers of reference; it had lost its
consciousness of the other world, with its finespun intangibilities; it had lost its sensibility, the
amazing range of its feelings and moods [...] it had also lost its subjectivity [...]" (Sharp ,1965: 211).
123
Cf. Sharp, 1965: 84. Hobbes is also mentioned here as providing (together with Bacon) the rational
base for the shift.
124
"To the Royal Society" quoted from: Martin, L.C. (ed.). Abraham Cowley – Poetry and Prose.
(Oxford Clarendon Press, 1949) pp. 54-60.
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Of the blest promis’d Land,
(lines 93-96; my italics)
In John Milton’s works, which shall only be hinted at here, truth is subject to
affections and desires (cf. Orr, 1998: 15) and a "[…] rejection of the corporeal
and the Female […]" (ibid.: 17) can be detected, which represents another
dissociative tendency, when compared for example to Donne’s or Marvell’s
literary embracement of the female sex. Furthermore, Grierson and Smith
find in "Paradise Lost" an "[...] unconquerable faith in reason and the power
of the will." (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 167).
The characteristics of IT2-poetry are therefore determined by a more
rationalistic approach, i.e. the emphasis will be on the functional side, as well
as on the aesthetic side. Three basic strands comprise IT2, which can be
seen as sub-types. We have already examined a sample of Pope’s poetry
and determined a shift towards the aesthetic function of verse, in accordance
with the Baconian doctrine, which is characterised by an opposition of sense
and metaphysical wit (cf. the remarks on Pope in Grierson/Smith, 1947:
198)125. Another specification of IT2 is didactic verse, one example of which
would be Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s poem "The Lover: A Ballad." It is a
catalogue of positive and negative characteristics of her desired lover and
presumably aimed at a general improvement of the masculine sex. And
thirdly, another subtype of IT2 may be found in the satiric verse, which gained
high popularity in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. An
example would be Jonathan Swift’s obituary to himself: "Verses on the death
of Dr. Swift." Further manifestations of IT2 may be diagnosed in the poetry of
Dryden, as exemplified above: "[Dryden] continually strove for a Latinate
precision, control, and clarity [...] " (Sanders, 1996: 257), as can be observed
- in addition to the poem "Upon the Death of Lord Hastings" - in the argument
of "The Hind and the Panther" (1687), which "[...] necessarily considers and
disposes of metaphysical problems […]" (Sharp, 1965: 185) or the satiric
125
Grierson/Smith elaborate further on this, accounting for two types of Pope’s poetry: "[...] poems of
feeling, imagination, and harmony. The second is that in which the pre-dominant element is
intellectual - witty poetry, satirical and didactic." (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 193) and conclude that
"Pope was the high priest of a rationalistic [...] age." (Grierson/Smith, 1947:202)
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elements in "Absalom and Achitophel"126. The shift therefore is towards the
intellectual, towards scientific precision and rhetorical wit, as represented in
the "[...] orthodox poetry of the century: didactic, satiric, pastoral, occasional
[...]" (on Johnson and Goldsmith in Grierson/Smith, 1947: 222)127, which was
accompanied by a lost complexity due to rationalism (cf. Sharp, 1965: x)128.
When making such statements as above, one needs to keep in mind
Sanders’ warning that "[t]o see the culture of the period [i.e. 18th cent.] as
exclusively a reflection of ideas of order and proportion is inevitably to see it
partially, even distortedly [...]" (Sanders, 1996: 279), however the Weberian
ideal type is the firm methodological foundation and justification of such
"distortions".
***
The development outlined in the section above provoked a massive
counter-reaction, which had its origin the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century. Imagination and the expression of feelings and individuality became
the dominant conception of the raison de’être of poetry and "[...] knowledge is
revealed through the imagination." (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 304). The poetic
pendulum swung from rationalism to emotionalism or from the left half of the
brain to the right half. Ideal-typically, the modes of poetry comprised in IT3
therefore show an emphasis of passion, of feeling and of individuality, which
is clearly opposite to the concepts embodied in IT2. Prime examples can be
found in the poetry of Wordsworth and Byron, as shown in the examinations
126
Cf.:
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon.
Lines 2-7; James Kinsley, The Poems of John Dryden, Vol. I. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958) p. 215.
127
A further direct contrast is made ibid. with regard to Joseph Addison: "[...] his ideal, and that of the
neo-classical school generally, of a poetry based on good sense, truth to Nature, understanding by
Nature what seemed to them most remote from the 'wit' of the so-called 'metaphysical poets' [...]"
(Grierson/Smith, 1947: 292).
128
Sharp states in more detail "[Augustan] poets and critics alike seemed to forget that the feelings,
moods, and subliminal concept which ordinarily are of the utmost importance in poetry cannot be
stated with mathematical exactness - or even in plain, unmetaphorical poetry. A metaphor is often the
closest possible approximation to the poet's truth, and any attempt to avoid the metaphor is a violation
of truth." (Sharp, 1965: 170).
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above. The intensity of feeling is thus gained at the expense of reason, wit
and intellectuality. Eliot refers to IT3 when he states that "[...] there is so little
that I should call metaphysical in the nineteenth century: the age was still
campaigning against the restrictions of the so-called age of reason." (VMP:
203).
Further examples shall again only be mentioned briefly here, without
going into detailed investigations. William Blake was opposed to "[...]
Socrates, Plato, and Greek and Latin authors generally [...] as the chiefs of
rationalists who had corrupted the world" (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 304). The
strong diction used here adequately expresses the sentiments of IT3-poets
towards IT2-poetry and their "[...] post-Enlightenment passion for Genius and
the Sublime [...]" (Bloom, 1997: 27). The effects become most obvious when
contrasted with another poet: "[Blake] recognized contraries and
complementary states of being; unlike him, [Coleridge] attempted to argue for
interdependency, for wholeness, and for 'continuity...in self-consciousness'
as the dynamic of human creativity" (Sanders, 1996: 365). Another
representation of IT3 can be observed in Sir Walter Scott's poetry, which "[...]
effected a revolution in taste, a 'shift in sensibility' [...]" (Grierson/Smith, 1947:
330)129. Eliot himself pointed to P.B. Shelley as sharing some characteristics
of IT3 when stating that "[...] the imagery of Shelley and Swinburne is merely
careless. They lack that wit of the seventeenth century, which is a deliberate
method of stimulating the mind." (VMP: 174). Shelley represented a
transcendental idealism (cf. Grierson/Smith, 1947: 366), rejected Christian
mythology and morality and embarked on "[...] a search for the source of the
mysterious 'Power' that he acknowledged to be implicit in wild nature and in
the inspiration of poetry" (Sanders, 1996: 380)130.
129
This "shift in sensibility” is described in detail by Lord Tweedsmuir, who wrote on Scott: "[...]
there is second type of lyric or lyrical ballad, mostly to be found in the novels, which mounts higher,
which at its best, indeed is beyond analysis, producing that sense of something inexplicable and
overwhelming which is the token of genius. Its subjects are the mysteries of life, not its gallant bustle
and the supreme mystery of death. It deals with enchantments and the things which 'tease us out of
thought', with the pale light of another world, with the crooked shadows from the outer darkness
which steal over the brightness of youth and love." (quoted from Grierson/Smith, 1947: 339).
130
The importance of imagination is part of these ideas: "[...] Shelley's mind was at once abstract and
imaginative [...] His natural mode of thinking was to abstract, to isolate, some element in Nature, or
man, and then, being a poet, to body it forth in imagery […]" (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 355), thus
contrasting with the Wordworthian ideas: "In protest against the didactic, hortatory strain which he
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The transition which followed chronologically was mediated by a mixed
type IT3-4, the detailed investigation into which has to be neglected here for
the sake of brevity. The major socio-historical influences, which determined
the transitional age and that which followed, can be assumed to have been
the increasing processes of urbanisation and industrialisation, which took
place in the nineteenth century. IT3-poetry was in opposition to these
developments, however, its gradual demise stemmed from exactly that
cultural progress or decay which it was opposed to.
***
The result eventually was a state from which the establishment of the
fourth ideal type IT4 seems plausible. The characteristics are more difficult to
ascertain, as it is conditioned by a polymorphic fragmentariness, which is
hard to disentangle. Furthermore, the temporary distance and the scholarly
detachment is not given to the same extent as in the cases of the other ideal
types. The positive side of this is that the intuitional truth of the following
characterisation will be more readily available, as we are to a certain degree
still in unison with the sentiments and ideas of IT4, although our age can be
assumed to be the transitional age IT4-5 towards the development of IT5.
As has already been indicated, the major characteristic of ideal type 4 is
the lack of uniform characteristics. Examples considered in the present paper
are as heterogeneous as Eliot’s "Whispers of immortality" and Hughes’
"There came a day". A more detailed investigation would presumably
establish further empirical evidence to indicate that in IT4 a particularisation of
such poetological-epistemological entities as thought, feeling, intelligence,
imagination has brought forth a shattered and fragmented state of mind, in
which these entities form a kaleidoscopic experience of the individual
(although this metaphor is inappropriate insofar as in a kaleidoscope there is
more unity than in IT4). Another characteristic, which is probably causally
linked with the fragmentation, is a prevalence of dichotomous views of reality,
i.e. – in the words of Harold Bloom – a "[...] modern dualism [...]" which is the
detects in Wordsworth he declares boldly for the detachment of the poet, his imaginative interest in
every aspect of life [...]" (ibid.: 372).
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"[...] dumbfounding abyss between ourselves and the object"131 (Bloom,
1997: 38)132. This Neo-Manichaeism (which is not devoted to any particular
religion) may be a conscious or unconscious strategy used to bring order to
the chaos. Consequently, it is no surprise that Hamburger states that the
occurrence of "[...] auxiliary religions [...]" is a feature of modern poetry (cf.
Hamburger, 1969: 18f)133. Referring to Paz he analyses the dualism in more
detail:
Modern poetry, according to [Octavio] Paz, moves
between two poles, which he calls the magical and the
revolutionary. The magical consists in a desire to return to
nature by dissolving the self-consciousness that separates
us from it [...]. The revolutionary aspiration, on the other
hand, demands a 'conquest of the historical world and of
nature'. (Hamburger, 1969: 40).
A certain uncertainty, however, remains in modern poetry, as stated by
Elizabeth Sewell in "The Structure of Poetry": It is an exploration and
discovery, rather than assertion, of truth (quoted acc. to Hamburger, 1969:
24). Contrary to this is Hamburger’s own view:
[...] personal feeling and personal imagination still accord
with general truths of a meaningful kind; that the purest
and most intense perceptions of poets remain exemplary
because they find names for that which would otherwise
remain unnamed. (Bonneefoy, Jaccottet, Robert Duncan).
(Hamburger, 1969: 247).
It is noteworthy that he defines a subjective truth in these lines, i.e. an
epistemological subjectivity, of which more shall be said further down.
Particular examples of this state of poetry, which can be derived from
an ideal type specified this way, would include a number of modern poets, as
can be hypothetically stated. D.H. Lawrence’s poetry would present a
131
Bloom traces this state back to Descartes and finds the root of it in his extensiveness (cf. Bloom,
1997: 38), an analysis which is in agreement with the progression from IT1 to IT4.
132
This hints at a qualitative difference regarding the appearance of the dissociation of sensibility,
when compared to the following statement regarding Blake: "The enigma of life, the fundamental
contradiction in which life is involved, set forth in the ‘Songs of Innocence’ and the ‘Songs of
Experience’, consists in the fact that the spirit of man is profoundly divided against itself."
(Grierson/Smith, 1947: 302; my italics).
133
Sanders arrives at a similar conclusion in his investigations regarding W.H. Auden: "Subversion
and unpredictability, which had once so troubled Auden's fellow-poets of the 1930s, are now taken as
evidence of the divine; the temporal seems to be dissolvable in the eternal, thisness in otherness, the
material in the mystical." (Sanders, 1996: 565). This process of one entity dissolving in the other is
not to be confused with a unified experience. Dissolving implies the termination of existence, not an
ideal unification of disparate entities.
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particularly intriguing example, as his escape comes in a form, which
resembles more a regress: "[...] he was not in revolt against Western
civilisation but against reason itself, calling on men to return to the life of
instinct and 'think with the blood'" (Grierson/Smith, 1947: 506). This formula
of thinking with the blood is slightly reminiscent of Eliot’s phrase "thinking
through the senses", but remains one-sidedly in its emphasis of the
corporeal. Consequently, Lawrence thought that a "[...] single thought, not an
argument, can only exist easily in verse" (quoted from Sanders, 1996: 523), a
statement which is contradicted by the sample from metaphysical poetry, as
seen above.
William Empson, for instance, seems to have felt a longing to escape
from the disintegrated fragmentariness, when he said that he "[...] 'thought it
would be really nice to write beautiful things like the poet Donne. I would sit
by the fire trying to think of an interesting puzzle.' " (Thwaite, 1978: 97)134. In
Empson's notes to the poem 'Bacchus' notions of Keats’ negative capability
resound: "life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't
be solved by analysis" (quoted from Thwaite, 1978: 98). However, also his
poems (as Larkin’s "Talking in Bed") "[...] seem to be concerned with
incommunicability itself, with the isolation of human beings [...]" (Thwaite,
1978: 97)135.
Similar elements can be distinguished in Isaac Rosenberg’s poetry.
Commenting on "Returning, we hear larks"136 Sanders acknowledges that
Rosenberg’s poems "[...] allow for an association of dissociated elements
[...]. Rosenberg's is a poetry of proto-Modernist fragmentation which
134
Thwaite further indicates: "The limitations of the rational intelligence, of wit and sophistication the limitations, in fact, of his own methods - are themselves ironically questioned. The tensions and
contradictions are recognized and, through Empson's agility, reconciled - if only in the temporary
peace that is a poem." (Thwaite, 1978: 100).
135
As for example in "Let It Go":
It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can’t
Tell or remember even what they were.
The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don’t want madhouse and the whole thing there.
John Haffenden (ed.), The Complete Poems of William Empson (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of
Florida, 2000).
136
In: Martin Stephen (ed.), Poems of the First World War: 'Never Such Innocence’ (London:
Everyman, 1995) p. 169.
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3.4 An interpretative principle: The poet and the pendulum - four ideal types
3.4.3 The ideal type dissociation of sensibility
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discovers an objectivity in a world being physically pulled and blown apart"
(Sanders, 1996: 502f). It is remarkable to note that seemingly the increase of
the dissociation, which results in the fragmentariness of IT4, goes along with
an increased consciousness of this dissociation of sensibility by IT4-poets.
This consciousness might be a prerequisite to overcome the state of
dissociation.
3.4.3
T
The ideal type dissociation of sensibility
he preceding chapters have shown the value of Weber’s concept
of the ideal type for literary studies. One important notion
regarding T.S. Eliot’s term dissociation of sensibility has been neglected by
critics. As demonstrated in chapter 3.1.3 the majority of meta-criticism
concentrated on philosophical-terminological examinations of Eliot’s theory.
To a large extent these critics were concerned with what Eliot meant exactly
when he wrote about "thought", "feeling" and "sensibility", as he never
defined the key terms of his theory himself.
In my opinion, the term dissociation of sensibility has to be regarded as
an ideal type in the Weberian sense - ITdos. The following words describe
clearly the essence of the ideal type as a developmental model applicable in
the formulation of hypotheses:
[...] wir [lesen] aus der Realität des historisch Gegebenen
jene Einzelzüge [...], die wir dort in vielfach vermittelter,
gebrochener, mehr oder minder folgerichtiger und
vollständigere Art, mehr oder minder vermischt mit
anderen, heterogenen, sich auswirkend finden, in ihrer
schärfsten, konsequentesten Ausprägung [...], nach ihrer
Zusammengehörigkeit kombinieren und so einen ‚idealtypischen’ Begriff, ein Gedankengebilde herstellen, dem
sich die faktischen Durchschnittsinhalte des Historischen in
sehr verschiedenem Grade annähern. (Weber, 1995: 304;
italics original).
This process of construction lead Eliot to the formulation of his hypothesis of
the dissociation of sensibility. The historically given served as the empirical
basis for the combination of poems according to their characteristics. Eliot
focussed on the relation of thought and feeling and the modes of
representation of these concepts in the poetry of different ages. Abstracting
from the concrete empirical level, the developmental line was derived, which
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Eliot referred to as "dissociation of sensibility". As we have seen above,
evidence for approximations to this generalised "construction of thought"
(Gedankengebilde) may be found with some degree of certainty. The
following figure illustrates the findings:
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3.4 An interpretative principle: The poet and the pendulum - four ideal types
3.4.3 The ideal type dissociation of sensibility
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ITdos
IT1
IT2
IT1-2
IT3
IT2-3
IT5?
IT4
IT3-4
IT4-5?
This figure is a simplified depiction of the ideal-typical (literary) history
and the process of dissociation which has conditioned it. What has not been
illustrated is the presence of every ideal type at any point in time, however
minimal this presence may be.
When interpreting the process of a dissociation of sensibility as an ideal
typical historical process, certain arguments used by critics of Eliot to
devaluate this theory become meaningless. Eliot’s later statement that "[i]n
Donne, there is a manifest fissure between thought and sensibility [...]"
(DIOT: 8) or similarly Eliot’s withdrawal from his earlier rigid position
regarding Milton and the differentiation between sound and sense in
"Paradise Lost", do not contradict himself. An ideal-typical construction can
not be falsified by counter-examples, such as Donne and Milton (if we take
Eliot’s later perspectives as objective assessments, rather than concessions
to his critics). At the same time, an "Anything Goes"-construction of
hypotheses, which would lead to scholarly relativism and subjectivism, is
prevented by the required testing of the ideal-typical hypothesis against
empirical data. Eliot’s major short-coming was that he himself never
attempted to present diachronic examinations of the dissociation of
sensibility. Hopefully, the present paper might be seen as a minor
contribution to filling this gap.
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3.5
The lyrical eye: notes towards the definition of
a literary theory
Wearied at length with observing
its dull movement, I turned my
eyes upon the other objects in the
cell.
Edgar Allen Poe,
"The Pit and the Pendulum"
T
he importance of the assessments above for literary theory derive
not only from the fact that Eliot was a paradigm of the poet-critic
and as such strifed to integrate the critical and the creative mind137. It is
equally necessary to address the questions how the dissociation of sensibility
has affected the mind of post-modern human beings and their society138 and
which consequences it has on how we read and how we should read.
3.5.1
T
A note on psychopathology – a dissociated
society?
he history of the term "dissociation" already points to
psychopathological implications of a dissociated sensibility. The
term has been used to denote the pathological disorder nowadays referred to
as schizophrenia (cf. Mahanti. 1980: 20). C.G. Jung has continued to use the
term in this way: "Um der geistigen Stabilität und auch um der
physiologischen Gesundheit willen müssen das Unbewusste und das
Bewusste miteinander verbunden funktionieren. Werden sie voneinander
getrennt oder ‚dissoziiert’, dann ergibt sich eine psychische Störung" (Jung,
1968: 52; my italics)139.
137
"Eliot wants to illustrate that 'the relation of the critical to the creative mind was not one of simple
antagonism in the Elizabethan age' and to demonstrate 'the intimacy of the creative and the critical
mind'." (Snare, 1982: 124; quoting from UPUC). The larger implications also hinted at by Snare: "To
be a little more accurate, the divorce is not solely between the literary and the critical […], but
between whole cultural forces at large (especially between those of the sixteenth and the seventeenth
centuries) on the one hand, and in rather smaller estrangements, say between theoretical and practical
criticism on the other." (Snare, 1982: 115).
138
As Eliot was one of the "[...] best literary critics [who] tend to see literature as both part and
reflection of society. And so they have tended to be critics, more or less explicitly, of society as well
as of writers." (Tamplin, 1992: 103).
139
Jung examines the example of an alcoholic, who had fallen prey to a sect, and generalises from this
instance: "Dies ist ein Aspekt des modernen ‚kulturellen’ Geistes, der einer näheren Betrachtung wert
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This connection is more than merely a terminological association, as
Mahanti further points out: "[…] the notion of two kinds of self, one modern
and fragmented and the other ancient and whole, was a familiar one to
[Eliot]" (Mahanti, 1980: 20). The questions posed by this connection are far
reaching and essential to an understanding of modern society. If a
development which we might call “dissociation of sensibility” did indeed take
place (and still continuous to affect us), can it rightly be assessed that we
suffer from a "[…] schizophrenia in the national or collective personality […]"
(Mahanti, 1980: 19)140?
Apparently, Eliot had such a development in mind when he introduced
the term dissociation of sensibility. He was aware of the associations such a
diagnosis would entail, although he limited his examinations to the literary
development of poetry. Nevertheless, "[…] Eliot apparently wishes to suggest
that the individual poet's mind is a medium through which the collective
memory of the civilization asserts itself." (Mahanti, 1980: 22; italics original).
The traces of the dissociation of sensibility therefore are to be searched for in
the collective memory141 and it would be the collective memory which is
affected by the dissociation of sensibility. Obviously, if this is the case,
individual representations would inductively contribute to the foundation of
such an assumption, but the absence of the dissociation in each and every
member of the culture (which has to be seen in our context as a
supranational entity) would not lead to the falsification of the hypothesis.
Nowadays, the fragmented personality of human beings is observable
not only in the poetry of the age, but everywhere. We have lost to a large
extent the ability to view the universe of our collective Lebenswelt as a whole
and are no longer able to integrate the various facets of our existence and
experience. Molecular physics and 19th century novels, bureaucracy and the
transcendental reaching out of our souls, reading Spinoza and falling in love
ist. Er zeigt einen alarmierenden Grad von Dissoziiertheit und psychologischer Verwirrung." (Jung
1968: 85).
140
"National" is too narrow as the process would include the entirety of Western civilization.
141
Cf. A. and J. Assmann, “Das Gestern im Heute. Medien und soziales Gedächtnis.”, In: K. Merten
(ed.), Die Wirklichkeit der Medien, (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag 1994) pp. 114-140.
The Geneva Critic J. Hillis Miller has used the term "collective mind" for the same concept. Cf. his
Poets of Reality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965) p. 157.
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(to use Eliot’s example; cf. MP: 287) are seen as stemming from contrary
realms of our lives. In order to come to terms we resort to binary Manichaen
oppositions142, such as natural sciences and humanities (Dilthey), man and
woman, good and bad, Christian and Muslim, which further the process of
dissociation from ourselves and from the unity with our fellow (wo)men even
more.
Evidently, Eliot (at least in his early years) urgently felt the need for a
counter-action to this process and saw the "salvation" as the primary task of
the poet: "[Eliot] is in fact looking forward to the miraculous act of a creative
genius who in his poetry will re-twine 'as many straying strands of tradition as
possible'" (Mahanti, 1980: 24; quoting from UPUC). In Eliot’s theory of poetry,
the notion of the tradition, on which contemporary poetry should be based,
takes on a different significance in the light of this development:
[T]he partial personality which has emerged since the
Renaissance is neither co-extensive nor integrated with the
whole of tradition (memory or mind), and as such it is an
obstacle to the spontaneity of the creative process
because it diffuses the ideal synthesis of data, or the
concentration to be achieved under an intensity of
pressure. (Mahanti, 1980: 23).
It is apparent from Mahanti’s analysis that the dissociation had far-reaching
effects on the productive poetic mind. As similar faculties are involved in the
reading process I will now turn the attention from the poet to the reader – and
the poet in every reader143.
142
Jung views these dichotomies as essential and inevitable to human existence: "Traurige Wahrheit
ist, dass das Leben des Menschen aus einem Komplex unerbittlicher Gegensätze besteht – Tag und
Nacht, Geburt und Tod, Glück und Unglück, Gut und Böse. Wir sind nicht einmal sicher, ob eins über
das andere die Oberhand gewinnen wird, ob das Gute das Böse oder die Freude den Schmerz
besiegen. Das ist und bleibt ein Schlachtfeld; wenn dem nicht so wäre, würde nichts mehr existieren
können." (Jung 1968: 85) He thus neglects the observable increase of the dissociation. Although such
oppositions have always existed, they have not always be seen as impossible to unify as is the case
today.
143
I agree with Bloom here, regarding this perhaps daring assertion of a poet in the reader: "The poet
in every reader does not experience the same disjunction from what he reads that the critic in every
reader necessarily feels. What gives pleasure to the critic in a reader may give anxiety to the poet in
him, an anxiety we have learned, as readers, to neglect, to our own loss and peril. This anxiety, this
mode of melancholy, is the anxiety of influence, the dark and daemonic ground upon which we now
enter." (Bloom, 1997: 25; italics original).
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3.5 The lyrical eye: notes towards the definition of a literary theory
3.5.2 A note on reverse engineering in poetry: from impersonality to epistemological subjectivity
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3.5.2
H
A note on reverse engineering in poetry: from
impersonality to epistemological subjectivity
aving now established with some certainty the historical
development of a dissociation of sensibility from metaphysical
poetry to the present age, we will expand the investigation to include further
relevant aspects of T.S. Eliot’s poetological theory and delineate some of the
consequences for literary theory144.
One key concept in the early poetic theory of Eliot is the impersonality
of the poetic products. In "Tradition and the Individual Talent" Eliot states that
"[t]he progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction
of personality." (TATIT: 17). And he continues: "Poetry [...] is not the
expression of personality, but an escape from personality." (TATIT: 21)145.
Eliot is aiming at establishing a poetics which is opposed to the Romantic
and especially Wordsworthian concept of poetry. The expression of the
individual thoughts and feelings are to be avoided. On the contrary, the poem
– or the work of art in general – is an expression of fundamental sentiments
common to all men (or at least those with a similar socio-cultural
background), deeply rooted in the tradition146.
In accordance with Eliot’s ideas the poetic creation therefore comprises
a process which leads from individuality to generality, from the subjective to
the objective, from the poet’s mind to the text. The poet does not give
expression to his or her feelings in an act of inspirational transformation of
his/her personality. On the contrary, the creation of poetry is the result of an
intricate communicational act with the self, in which the self is eliminated.
Consequently, any efforts of gaining access to the intention of the author are
144
A very detailed account of how concepts of Eliot are connected with and reiterated in modern
literary theories can be found in: Rajnath, "'The Death of the Author': T.S.Eliot and Contemporary
Criticism." In: Critical Practice: A Journal of Critical and Literary Studies (New Delhi: Vol. 1 1994),
pp. 89-107.
145
Hamburger observes that Eliot in his own poetry manages to escape from personality by
introducing multiple personalities or personae (cf. Hamburger, 1969: 114f), and thus "[...] succeeded
in reducing his multiple selves to a unity and purity rare in modern poetry." (Hamburger, 1969: 130).
146
The key term "tradition" in Eliot’s theory has to be neglected here. The emphasis Eliot put on this
term led Bloom to the remark Eliot perhaps allowed himself to be dominated by the "Covering
Cherub" (cf. Bloom, 1997: 24).
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futile (cf. the term "intentional fallacy" coined by Wimsatt and Beardsley147).
If above assumptions are correct, then the reading process must be the
reversal of the creational process and will therefore lead us from the text to
personality, from generality to individuality or from objectivity (the text on the
page) to subjectivity (the reader’s interpretation). When we engage with
poetry, we are building up a relationship with the words on the page and the
text is vivified in our minds. Georges Poulet similarly points out:
Reading then is the act in which the subjective principle
which I call 'I' Is modified in such a way that I no longer
have the right, strictly speaking, to consider it as my 'I'. I
am on loan to another, and this other things, feels, suffers,
and acts within me.148
The poem eventually is that which is created in our minds during the process
of reading as a result of the interaction of text and imagination, the "virtual
dimension", as Wolfgang Iser has called this product (cf. Iser, 1978: 279). A
transformation takes place in the course of which dead matter gains life:
Reading is a creatio ex texto of personality out of impersonality and that
personality is the reader’s own personality149. A. E. Housman adequately
stated this neglected fact in a lecture held in 1933, "The Name and Nature of
Poetry":
Poems very seldom consist of poetry and nothing else; and
pleasure can be derived also from their other ingredients. I
am convinced that most readers, when they think they are
admiring poetry, are deceived by inability to analyse their
sensations, and that they are really admiring, not the
poetry of the passage before them, but something else in
it, which they like better than poetry. (quoted from
Hamburger, 1969: 34).
The phrase "objective interpretation" is therefore an oxymoron. Is the ultimate
consequence then total relativism and solipsism in the process of
147
Cf. William K. Wimssatt and Monroe C. Beardsley. "The Intentional Fallacy". In: W.K.W. The
Verbal Icon – Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954) pp.
3-18.
148
Georges Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading" (In: New Literary History, October 1969) p. 59.
149
In his examination of Blanchot Paul de Man states a similar observation: "Blanchot must eliminate
from his work all elements derived from everyday experience, from involvement with others, all
reifying tendencies that tend to equate work with natural objects: only when the extreme purification
has been achieved can he turn towards the truly temporal dimension of the text. The reversal implies a
return toward a subject that in fact never ceased to be present." Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1965) p. 78; my italics.
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interpretation, i.e. is it the case – speaking with Humpty-Dumpty – that a
poem means what I want it to mean, neither more nor less?
The above proceeding from text to reader I would like to describe as
reverse engineering of a poem, as it is the reversal of the writing process and
requires considerable effort on the side of the reader. In order to reap the
fruits of great poetry the reader has to relate to the words with intense
empathy, filling in the gaps in the sequence of "intentional verse correlatives"
(to rephrase Ingarden’s term150). This state of empathy is presumably what
Eliot called the reader’s "[...] state of sensitivity [...]" (UPUC 93). Theoretical
descriptions of this process with regard to poetry have been neglected to a
large extent, as the work of Jauß and Iser – the high priests of reception
aesthetics –and their novices has been concentrated on prose fiction.
The experience of the reading process then will result in a subjective
flux of the sensibility of the reader, as he engages in an act of
communication. However, solipsism is prevented due to the cognitional
characteristics of poetry, which can be verified inter-subjectively151. These
cognitional characteristics lead to an insight and realization hitherto
unconsciously present internally and externally to the reader. The ultimate
result of the process of reverse engineering is therefore an epistemological
subjectivity, a term indicating a balance of objectivity and subjectivity.
Deanne Bogdan refers to the establishment of such an epistemological
subjectivity as the "logical priority of direct response":
I believe the next wave of reader-oriented research should
deepen its exploration into whether and how students'
appreciation for their own acts of aesthesis can be
honoured, and their agentic subjectivity strengthened,
without a parallel increased risk relativism and solipsism.
(Bogdan, 2000: 35).
150
Cf. the chapter on "intentional sentence correlatives " in Roman Ingarden. Das literarische
Kunstwerk: eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft,
(Halle, Saale: Niemeyer, 1931) p. 130f.
151
Empirical research into the reader response – despite the shallowness of the insight –has tried to
establish a certain statistical objectivity of the result of the reading process. Cf. for example:
Heinz Hillmann, "Rezeption – empirisch." In: Dehn, Wilhelm, ed., Ästhetische Erfahrung und
literarisches Lernen, (Frankfurt: Athenaeum Fischer, 1974. 2d ed., 1978).
Werner Bauer, Text und Rezeption. Wirkungsanalyse zeitgenössischer Lyrik am Beispiel des
Gedichtes "Fadensonnen" von Paul Celan (Frankfurt/M.: Athenäum, 1972).
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And she continues: "With the logical priority of direct response, the question
of how literary texts work on readers is subordinated to the fact that they do"
(Bogdan, 2000: 35)152. Rephrasing her terminology we can therefore assume
a logical priority of epistemological subjectivity for the branch of reception
aesthetics dealing with the reader response.
Furthermore, such a shift of emphasis in the reading process might
prove to be beneficial for the creative mind. Associative reflection, which is
the basis in creational processes, comprises “yoking together”
heterogeneous ideas. A unified sensibility based on epistemological
subjectivity would be fruitful in this process.
3.5.3
A note on the relevance of unified sensibility
for reception (-theory) and the response of
the reader
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
Wallace Stevens
L
et us assume for a moment that above considerations are correct.
Regarding our focus of interest – the dissociation of sensibility –
we have to ask firstly in what way and to what extent a unified sensibility is a
prerequisite for the derivation of an epistemological subjectivity in the
process of reading (not only) metaphysical poetry and secondly, if the
interaction with this kind of poetry can in any way result in a counter-reaction
towards the dissociating process in the form of a re-integration of thought and
feeling. The first question emphasises the epistemological qualities of
metaphysical poetry and the second question focuses on the didactic
potential.
152
Despite her impressive insight into the nature of Eliot’s ideas, Bogdan unfortunately links her
exposition to ideological points of view, which in consequence limits the perspective. She points out
that "[…] there needs to be a return to some form of objectivity in literary knowledge grounded in the
category of experience as mediated by theory. Feminist criticism and feminist pedagogy has had a
respected theory of doing just that" (Bogdan, 2000: 35). Bogdan fails to notice that placing such an
emphasis on feminist criticism (as important as it has been for the restructuring of the canon) would
eventually result in increasing the dissociation between the binary opposition of the male and the
female. In The Zuni Man-Woman (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991) Will Roscoe
demonstrates the arbitrariness not only of gender roles, but also of the number of genders, by
describing the third gender found in the society of the native American pueblo people.
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The history of the reception of literary works shows that texts have
always been read, perceived and understood differently by different readers
at different times. Moreover, texts have also been read differently by different
readers of the same age. And finally, it is a well-known fact that the same text
has been read differently by the same reader at different times.
Interpretations of (literary) texts therefore differ on a synchronic and on a
diachronic inter-individual axis and also on a diachronic intra-individual axis.
The empiricist branch of reception theory has endeavoured to study the
synchronic cross-sections of interpretations153, whereas the historicist branch
focussed on the inter-individual diachronic set of interpretations154. The third
axis of qualitative difference has been neglected and studies of how the
same reader reads texts at different times are to my knowledge absent, but
they would clearly hint at the potential of a modification in the reader’s
response, which is important to note for didactic considerations.
We have also seen that the dissociation of sensibility is a complex
psycho-sociological process (or decline), which effects Western civilization in
its entirety. The current state of mind is consequently incompatible with the
one of Elizabethan and Jacobean contemporaries. Therefore, the appeal
structure of metaphysical poetry leads us to assume that the "intended
reader" (Erwin Wolff) of the poetry of the metaphysicals’ is a unified reader,
i.e. an ideal-typical subject engaging in the reading process, which has the
ability to feel the thought and think the feeling. The question then is to what
extent and in which way (if at all) metaphysical poetry is valuable to a
dissociated reader. The importance of these questions is also hinted at by
Wallerstein: "Much of the present uncertainty and disagreement as to
Donne's significance arises from lack of precise insight into his poetic method
and intention, no less than from our own divergences in values and aesthetic
approach." (Wallerstein, 1965: 3).
This question is closely linked to the remarks made above regarding the
logical priority of epistemological subjectivity. The process described above
in connection with the reception of poetical works (the exact kind of which
153
Cf. footnote 151.
154
Cf. for instance Hans Robert Jauß, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft.
(Konstanz: Universitätsverlag, 1967).
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would have to be carefully established) would work towards "[…] a dialectical
reintegration of sensibility within the logical priority of direct response and
feminist pedagogy [which] would make of literary reading a dream not only
for awakened minds but for enlivened hearts." (Bogdan, 2000: 36). However,
the disproportionate influence of feminist pedagogy would be detrimental to
the required balance and should be avoided in order to achieve the desired
equilibrium of "awakened minds" and "enlivened hearts", i.e. a unified
sensibility on the side of the reader.
As Manganaro points out "Eliot is clearly fascinated by the notion of a
mystical mentality [...] that establishes links between physical and spiritual
realms." (Manganaro, 1992: 93). I believe the unified sensibility would serve
as a way of fostering such a state of mind and thus provide the reader with
an accessibility to the mystical mentality, especially in a world which has to a
large degree lost its spiritual way155. As already pointed out earlier, Eliot
himself never provided any hints as to the path to his ideal of a unified
sensibility (cf. note 42). This considerable short-coming has been filled by
Mahanti with the hypothesis that the "[…] re-integration of intellect […] may
be accomplished by the poet's adherence to the non-spatial 'logic of the
imagination' by his development of the non-temporal 'visual imagination' […]"
(Mahanti, 1980: 26)156. This reasoning can adequately be extended to the
reader and points out the relevance of the imaginative faculty to
epistemological subjectivity. From a didactic point of view, the research into
the reader response should emphasise the logical priority of epistemological
subjectivity, simultaneously aiming at achieving something like a unified
sensibility. The methodological inventory might need a slight readjustment in
order to realize this ambitious aim, however, it may turn out being worth the
restructuring.
155
This is of course the reason why such a remark seems slightly odd in a paper of the present kind.
156
The re-integration of the intellect involves further elements, as Mahanti points out, which can not
be transferred to the aspects of reception, e.g. "[...] the deliberate cultivation of the historical sense
[...]", "[...] the use of objective correlative so that immediate experience can be transformed into art
[...]" and "[...] a revolution in the idiom by the poet [...]" (Mahanti, 1980: 26).
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3.5 TheChanging
lyrical eye:
notes towards
the Poetry
definition
of the
a literary
theory to the Twentieth Century
The Loss of Unified Experience:
Sensibility
in English
from
Seventeenth
3.5.3 A note on the relevance of unified sensibility for reception (-theory) and the response of the reader
___________________________________________________________________________________________
4 Conclusions
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
T.S. Eliot
T
he reception of the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century
has had a most interesting history, as we have seen in chapter
3.1. Having introduced the provocative theory of dissociation of sensibility,
the popularity and importance of metaphysical poetry has gained at the
beginning of the 20th century due to Eliot’s re-evaluation. Since this
dissociation can be examined in the light of the poetry of the three centuries,
the textual investigations of the current work seem to indicate that such a
development did indeed take place. Notwithstanding the various exceptions
to this general assessment, it is possible to structure the period using the
theoretical approach of the ideal type. It seems plausible to divide the period
into four ideal types, inducing the various characteristics from the specimens
of poetry of the respective ages. Transitional ideal types, which comprise
characteristics of both of their chronologically neighbouring types, have been
employed to refine the rough picture. Two implications of the process of
dissociation of sensibility have to be seen in the fields of psycho-sociology
and reception theory, in the former regarding the dissociated state of modern
society and in the latter regarding the interaction of dissociated reader and
unified text.
I would like to think that the examinations undertaken in this paper have
shown to some degree that Thomas Stearns Eliot’s theory of a dissociation of
sensibility can be viewed to be an accurate account of that "something"
which conditioned poetry ever since the seventeenth century. This process
has had a profound effect not merely on poetry and not merely on England.
On the contrary, another hypothesis worth examining is to trace the
development in other realms of human activity and other national corpora of
texts, as well.
Several questions remain open to be answered elsewhere:
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•
Further collections of samples of poetry testifying to a
dissociation of sensibility should turn out to be a fruitful
enterprise, as well as diachronic investigations into the same
phenomenon occurring in prose fiction are to my knowledge still
absent157.
•
This investigation can easily be extended to the corpora of
literature in other languages as well, of course.
•
The extensive collaboration of various disciplines (hinted at in
footnote 25) to provide a detailed account of the disintegration of
Western mind would be a great enterprise to embark on. Such
an enterprise might even enable the establishment of the causes
for the change in sensibility158.
•
Finally, the question, if the processual model of the dissociation
of sensibility can indeed be traced back to include preAristotelian philosophy (cf. footnote 39) remains to be answered.
What has become obvious though (or so I should hope) is the hitherto
neglected connection between the dissociated sensibility as reflected in
poetry (or literature in general) and the way we interact with such literature,
be it academically or otherwise. If the reflections presented in the last chapter
can be assumed to hold a grain of truth, they would call for a paradigm shift
in the study and reception of literature, as well as in the didactics thereof.
And ultimately, the examination might have succeeded in raising the
awareness regarding the dissociated state of society. The age of dissociation
seems to have a firm hold on us. But: Although we might be living in a
dissociated age, it also may be the pre-unified age.
157
On the other hand, the difference between poetry and prose could be seen as another pair of
dissociated concepts.
158
In the present work the undertaking of a search for the causes of the dissociation of sensibility has
been neglected, as such a search would be too complex to be carried out within the limitations of this
work
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The Loss of Unified Experience: Changing Sensibility in English Poetry from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century.
5 Appendix – the poems
The poems analysed in chapter 2.2 (in order of appearance):
Love
"To his Coy Mistress"
Andrew Marvell
"The Extasie"
John Donne
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
1
2
3
4
Where, like a pillow on a bed,
A Pregnant banke swel'd up, to rest
The violets reclining head,
Sat we two, one anothers best;
5
6
7
8
Our hands were firmely cimented
With a fast balme, which thence did spring,
Our eye-beames twisted, and did thred
Our eyes, upon one double string,
9
10
11
12
So to'entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the meanes to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
13
14
15
16
As'twixt two equall Armies, Fate
Suspends uncertaine victorie,
Our soules, (which to advance their state,
Were gone out,) hung 'twixt her, and mee.
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
17
18
19
20
And whil'st our soules negotiate there,
Wee like sepulchrall statues lay,
All day, the same our postures were,
And wee said nothing, all the day.
21
22
23
24
If any, so by love refin'd,
That he soules language understood,
And by good love were growen all minde,
Within convenient distance stood,
25
26
27
28
He (though he knowes not which soule spake,
Because both meant, both spake the same)
Might thence a new concoction take,
And part farre purer then he came.
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
29
30
31
32
This Extasie doth unperplex
(We said) and tell us what we love,
Wee see by this, it was not sexe
Wee see, we saw not what did move:
33
34
35
36
But as all severall soules containe
Mixture of things, they know not what,
Love, these mixt soules, doth mixe againe,
And makes both one, each this and that.
37
38
39
40
A single violet transplant,
The strength, the colour, and the size,
(All which before was poore, and scant,)
Redoubles still, and multiplies.
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41
42
43
44
When love, with one another so
Interanimates two soules,
That abler soule, which thence doth flow,
Defects of lonelinesse controules.
45
46
47
48
Wee then, who are this new soule, know,
Of what we are compos'd, and made,
For, th'Atomies of which we grow,
Are soules, whom no change can invade.
49
50
51
52
But O alas, so long, so farre
Our bodies why doe wee forbeare?
They are ours, though not wee, Wee are
The intelligences, they the spheares.
53
54
55
56
We owe them thankes, because they thus,
Did us, to us, at first convay,
Yeelded their senses force to us,
Nor are drosse to us, but allay.
57
58
59
60
On man heavens influence workes not so,
But that it first imprints the ayre,
For soule into the soule may flow,
Though it to body first repaire.
61
62
63
64
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like soules as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtile knot, which makes us man:
65
66
67
68
So must pure lovers soules descend
T'affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great Prince in prison lies,
69
70
71
72
To'our bodies turne wee then, that so
Weake men on love reveal'd may looke;
Loves mysteries in soules doe grow,
But yet the body is his booke.
73
74
75
76
And if some lover, such as wee,
Have heard this dialogue of one,
Let him still marke us, he shall see
Small change, when we'are to bodies
gone.
"Desire"
S.T. Coleridge
1
2
3
4
Where true love burns Desire is Love's pure
flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.
"The Flight of Love"
P.B. Shelley
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
I
WHEN the lamp is shatter'd
The light in the dust lies dead—
When the cloud is scatter'd,
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remember'd not;
When the lips have spoken,
8
Lov'd accents are soon forgot.
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
II
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute—
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruin'd cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
III
When hearts have once mingl'd,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singl'd
To endure what it once possesst.
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home, and your bier?
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
IV
Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
Love's Philosophy
P.B. Shelley
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
THE fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle—
Why not I with thine?
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain'd its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
Nature
"I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"
William Wordsworth
1
2
3
4
5
6
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
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7
8
9
10
11
12
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
13
14
15
16
17
18
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
19
20
21
22
23
24
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
"The Water-fall"
Henry Vaughn
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
With what deep murmurs through time's
silent stealth
Doth thy transparent, cool, and wat'ry wealth
Here flowing fall,
And chide, and call,
As if his liquid, loose retinue stay'd
Ling'ring, and were of this steep place
afraid;
The common pass
Where, clear as glass,
All must descend
Not to an end,
But quicken'd by this deep and rocky grave,
Rise to a longer course more bright and
brave.
13
14
Dear stream! dear bank, where often I
Have sate and pleas'd my pensive
eye,
15
Why, since each drop of thy quick
store
16
17
Runs thither whence it flow'd before,
Should poor souls fear a shade or
night,
18
19
20
21
Who came, sure, from a sea of light?
Or since those drops are all sent back
So sure to thee, that none doth lack,
Why should frail flesh doubt any
more
22
That what God takes, he'll not
restore?
23
24
25
26
O useful element and clear!
My sacred wash and cleanser here,
My first consigner unto those
Fountains of life where the Lamb
goes!
27
What sublime truths and wholesome
themes
28
29
30
31
Lodge in thy mystical deep streams!
Such as dull man can never find
Unless that Spirit lead his mind
Which first upon thy face did move,
32
33
34
35
And hatch'd all with his quick'ning love.
As this loud brook's incessant fall
In streaming rings restagnates all,
Which reach by course the bank, and
then
36
37
38
39
40
Are no more seen, just so pass men.
O my invisible estate,
My glorious liberty, still late!
Thou art the channel my soul seeks,
Not this with cataracts and creeks.
"The Garden"
Andrew Marvell
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crowned from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow vergèd shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid,
While all flow'rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence, thy sister dear!
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men.
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow.
Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
No white nor red was ever seen
So am'rous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name.
Little, alas, they know, or heed,
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres'e'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow.
And Pan did after Syrinx speed,
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarene, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
Meanwhile the mind, from pleasures less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.
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me.
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
Here at the fountain's sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide:
There like a bird it sits, and sings,
Then whets, and combs its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
Such was that happy garden-state,
While man there walked without a mate:
After a place so pure, and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But 'twas beyond a mortal's share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises 'twere in one
To live in paradise alone.
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
How well the skilful gardener drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!
5
6
7
8
9
Magical Nature
By Robert Browning
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
I
Flower – I never fancied, jewel – I profess
you!
Bright I see and soft I feel the outside of a
flower.
Save but glow inside and – jewel, I should
guess you,
Dim to sight and rough to touch: the glory is
the dower.
II
You, forsooth, a flower? Nay, my love, a
jewel –
Jewel at no mercy of a moment in your
prime!
Time may fray the flower-face: kind be time
or cruel,
Jewel, from each facet, flash your laugh at
time!
Holy Sonnet 6: "Death be Not Proud..."
John Donne
2
3
4
11
12
13
14
Death be not proud, though some have
called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost
overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and
desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse
dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as
well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou
then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt
die.
"The Dying Christian to his Soul,"
ODE.
Alexander Pope
1
2
3
4
5
6
Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.
7
8
9
10
11
12
Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirit, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
13
14
15
16
17
18
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?
O death! where is thy Sting?
"Upon the death of the Lord Hastings"
John Dryden
1
2
3
4
5
Death
1
10
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures
bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more
must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Must Noble Hasting Immaturely die,
(The Honour of his ancient Family?)
Beauty and Learning thus together meet,
To bring a Winding for Wedding-sheet?
Must Vertue prove death’s Harbinger? Must
She,
With him expiring, feel Mortality?
Is death (Sin’s wages) Grace’s now?shall Art
Make us more Learned, onely to depart?
If Merit be Disease, if Vertue death;
To be Good, Not to be; who’d then bequeath
Himself to Discipline? Who’d not esteem
Labour a crime, Study Self-murther deem?
Our Noble Youth now have pretence to be
Dunces securely, Ign’rant healthfully.
Rare Linguist! Whose Worth speaks it self,
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17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
whose Praise,
Though not his Own, all Tongues Besides do
raise:
Then whom, Great Alexander may seem
Less;
Who conquer’d Men, but not their
Languages.
In his mouth Nations speak; his Tongue
might be
Interpreter to Greece, France, Italy.
His native Soyl was the Four parts O’ th’
Earth;
All Europe was too narrow for his Birth.
A young Apostle; and (with rev’rence may
I speak’it) inspir’d with gift of Tongues, as
They.
Nature gave him, a Childe, what Men in vain
Oft strive, by Art thought further’d, to
obtain.
His Body was an Orb, his sublime Soul
Did move on Vertue’s and on Learning’s
Pole:
Whose Reg’lar Motions better to our view,
Then Archimedes Sphere, the Heavens did
shew.
Graces and Vertues, Languages and Arts,
Beauty and Learning, fill’d up all the aprts.
Heav’ns Gifts, which do, like falling Stars,
appear
Scatter’d in Other; all, as in their Sphear,
Were fix’d and conglobate in ‘s Soul; and
thence
Shone th’row his Body, with sweet
Influence;
Letting their Glories so on each Limb fall,
The whole Frame render’d was Celestial.
Come, learned Ptolomy, and trial make,
If thou this Hero’s Altitude canst take;
But that transcend thy skill; thrice happie all,
Could we but prove thus Astronomical.
Liv’d Tycho now, struck with this Ray,
(which shone
More bright I’ th’ Morn then others beam at
Noon)
He’d take this Astrolabe, and seek out here
What new Star ‘t was did gild our
Hemisphere.
Replenish’d then with such rare Gifts as
these,
Where was room left for such a Foul
Disease?
The Nations sin hath drawn that Veil, which
shrouds
Our Day-spring in so benighting Clouds.
Heaven would no longer trust its Pledge; but
thus
Recall’d it; rapt its Ganymede from us.
Was there no milder but the Small Pox,
The very Filth’ness of Pandora’s Box?
So many Spots, like naeves, our Venus soil?
One Jewel set with so many a Fiol?
Blisters with pride swell’d; which th’row ‘s
flesh did sprout
Like Rose-buds, stuck I’ th’ Lily-skin about.
Each little Pimple had a Tear in it,
To wail the fault its rising did commit:
Who, Rebel-like with their own Lord at
strife,
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
Thus made an Insurrection ‘gainst his Life.
Or were these Gems sent to adorn his Skin,
The Cab’net of a richer Soul within?
No comet need foretell his Change drew on,
Whose Corps might seem a Constellation.
O had he di’d of old, how great a strife
Had been, who from his death should draw
their Life?
Who should by one rich draught, become what
ere
Seneca, Cato, Numa, Caesar, were:
Learn’d, Vertuous, Pious, Great; and have by
this
An universal Metempsychosis.
Must all these ag’d Sires in one Funeral
Expire? All die in one so young, so small?
Who, had Eliot liv’d his life out, his great Fame
Had swoln ‘bove any Greek or Romane Name.
But hasty Winter with one blast, hath brought
The hopes of Autumn, Summer, Spring to
nought.
Thus fades the Oak I’ th’ sprig, I’ th’ blade the
Corn;
Thus, without Young, this Phoenix dies, new
born.
Must then old three-legg’d gray-beards with
their Gout,
Catarrhs, Rheums, Aches, live three Ages out?
Times Offal, onely fir for the Hospital,
Or t’hang an Antiquaries room withal;
Must Drunkards, Lechers, spent with Sinning,
live
With such helps as Broths, Possits, Phyysick
give?
None live, but such as should die? Shall we
meet
With none but Ghostly Fathers in the Street?
Grief makes me rail; Sorrow will force its way;
And, Show’rs of Tears, Tempestuous Sighs
best lay.
The Tongue may fail; but over-glowing Eyes
Will weep out lasting streams of Elegies.
But thou, O Virgin-Widow, left alone,
Now thy belov’d, heaven-ravisht Spouse is
gone,
(Whose skilfule Sire in vain strove to apply
Med’cines, when thy – Balm was not Remedy)
With greater then Platonick love, O wed
His Soul, though not his Body, to thy Bed:
Let that make thee a Mother; bring thou forth
Th’ Idea’s of his Vertue, Knowledge, Worth;
Transcribe th’ Original in new Copies; give
Hastings o’ th’ better part: so shall he live
In ‘s Nobler Half; and the great Grandsire be
Of an Heroick Divine Progenie:
An Issue, which t’ Eternety shall last,
Yet but th’ Irradiations which he cast.
Erect no Mausolaeums : for his best
Monument is his Spouses Marble brest.
"And Thou Art Dead, As Young And Fair "
George Gordon, Lord Byron
‘Heu, quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui
meminesse!’
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1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1.
And thou art dead, as young and fair
As aught of mortal birth;
And form so soft, and charms so rare,
Too soon return’d to Earth!
Though Earth receiv’d them in her bed,
And o’er the spot the crowd may tread
In carelessness or mirth,
There is an eye which could not brook
A moment on that grave to look.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
2.
I will not ask where thou liest low,
Nor gaze upon the spot;
There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
So I behold them not:
It is enough for me to prove
That what I lov’d, and long must love,
Like common earth can rot;
To me there needs no stone to tell,
’Tis Nothing that I lov’d so well.
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
3.
Yet did I love thee to the last
As fervently as thou,
Who didst not change through all the past,
And canst not alter now.
The love where death has set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow:
And, what were worse, thou canst not see
Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
4.
The better days of life were ours;
The worst can be but mine:
The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
Shall never more be thine.
The silence of that dreamless sleep
I envy now too much to weep;
Nor need I to repine
That all those charms have pass’d away,
I might have watch’d through long decay.
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
5
The flower in ripen’d bloom unmatch’d
Must fall the earliest prey;
Though by no hand untimely snatch’d,
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck’d to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
6
I know not if I could have borne
To see thy beauties fade;
The night that follow’d such a morn
Had worn a deeper shade:
Thy day without a cloud hath pass’d,
And thou wert lovely to the last,
Extinguish’d, not decay’d;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.
55
7
As once I wept, if I could weep,
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
My tears might well be shed,
To think I was not near to keep
One vigil o’er thy bed;
To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
To fold thee in a faint embrace,
Uphold thy drooping head;
And show that love, however vain,
Nor thou nor I can feel again.
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
8
Yet how much less it were to gain,
Though thou hast left me free,
The loveliest things that still remain,
Than thus remember thee!
The all of thine that cannot die
Through dark and dread Eternity
Returns again to me,
And more thy buried love endears
Than aught except its living years.
"Sonnet"
[On the death of Richard West ].
Thomas Gray
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
In vain to me the smiling Mornings shine,
And redning Phoebus lifts his golden Fire;
The Birds in vain their amorous Descant joyn;
Or cheerful Fields resume their green Attire:
These Ears, alas! for other Notes repine,
A different Object do these Eyes require;
My lonely Anguish melts no Heart but mine,
And in my Breast the imperfect Joys expire.
Yet Morning smiles the busy Race to chear,
And newborn Pleasure brings to happier Men;
The Fields to all their wonted Tribute bear;
To warm their little Loves the Birds complain;
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.
"A Refusal to Mourn the death, by Fire, of a
Child in London"
Dylan Thomas
1
2
3
4
5
6
Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
7
8
9
10
11
12
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
13
14
15
16
17
18
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
19
Deep with the first dead lies London's
daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
20
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21
22
23
24
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her
mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
"Death"
George Herbert
1
2
3
4
Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous
thing,
Nothing but bones,
The sad effect of sadder grones:
Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not
sing.
5
6
7
8
For we consider'd thee as at some six
Or ten yeares hence,
After the losse of life and sense,
Flesh being turn'd to dust, and bones to
sticks.
9
We lookt on this side of thee, shooting short
;
Where we did finde
The shells of fledge souls left behinde,
Dry dust, which sheds no tears, but may
extort.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
But since our Saviours death did put some
bloud
Into thy face;
Thou art grown fair and full of grace,
Much in request, much sought for, as a good.
17
18
19
20
For we do now behold thee gay and glad,
As at dooms-day;
When souls shall wear their new aray,
And all thy bones with beautie shall be clad.
21
22
23
24
Therefore we can go die as sleep, and trust
Half that we have
Unto an honest faithfull grave;
Making our pillows either down, or dust.
"'Tis the Last Rose of Summer"
Thomas Moore
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
'Tis the last rose of Summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindre,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh!
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one,
To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed
Where thy mates of the garder
Lie scentless and dead.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone?
"The Dead Man Walking"
Thomas Hardy
1
2
3
4
They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?
5
6
7
8
I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.
9
10
11
12
Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.
13
14
15
16
There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death ....
17
18
19
20
- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.
21
22
23
24
But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.
25
26
27
28
When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;
29
30
31
32
And when my Love's heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.
33
34
35
36
And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day,
37
38
39
40
Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.
"Spring and Fall:"
Gerarld Manley Hopkins
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to a young child
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
MÁRGARÉT, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh ! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for
"What is death?"
Algernon Swinburne
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Looking on a page where stood
Graven of old on old-world wood
Death, and by the grave’s edge grim,
Pale, the young man facing him,
Asked my well-beloved of me
Once what stronge thing this might be,
Gaunt and great of limb.
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Death, I told him: and, surprise
Deepening more his wildwood eyes
(Like some sweet fleet thing’s whose breath
Speaks all spring though nought it saith),
Up he turned his rosebright face
Glorious with its seven year’s grace,
Asking – What is death?
22
23
24
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;
25
26
27
28
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
29
30
31
32
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be"
John Keats
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
"The Fountain of Blood"
Charles Baudelaire
1
"Whispers of Immortality"
T.S. Eliot
1
2
3
4
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
5
6
7
8
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead
limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
9
10
11
12
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
21
The couched Brazilian jaguar
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of
chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and Fame to nothingness do sink
2
3
4
It seems sometimes my heart pumps out a
flood,
As would a fountain sobbing rhythmically,
I listen as it murmurs very slowly,
But touch my skin in vain to find the blood.
5
6
7
8
It flows, like an arena full of dead,
And turns the paving stones into islands,
To quench the thirst of every creature, and
To dye, across the city, nature red.
9
10
11
I have often asked insidious wines
To deaden for a day what undermines;
Wine makes the eye more clear and the ear
more fine!
12
13
14
I have sought in love a sleep forgetful;
But love for me is but a mattress of quills
That makes a drink to give these cruel girls!
"Liebes-Lied"
Rainer Maria Rilke
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß
sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie
hinheben über dich zu anderen Dingen?
Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas
Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen
an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die
nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen
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8
9
10
11
12
13
schwingen.
Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,
nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,
der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.
Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?
Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?
O süßes Lied.
"Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes"
Rainer Maria Rilke
1
2
3
4
5
Das war der Seelen wunderliches Bergwerk.
Wie stille Silbererze gingen sie
als Adern durch sein Dunkel. Zwischen
Wurzeln
entsprang das Blut, das fortgeht zu den
Menschen,
und schwer wie Porphyr sah es aus im
Dunkel.
Sonst war nichts Rotes.
42
43
44
45
46
Den Gott des Ganges und der weiten Botschaft,
die Reisehaube über hellen Augen,
den schlanken Stab hertragend vor dem Leibe
und flügelschlagend an den Fußgelenken;
und seiner linken Hand gegeben: sie.
47
48
49
50
51
Die So-geliebte, daß aus einer Leier
mehr Klage kam als je aus Klagefrauen;
daß eine Welt aus Klage ward, in der
alles noch einmal da war: Wald und Tal
und Weg und Ortschaft, Feld und Fluß und
Tier;
und daß um diese Klage-Welt, ganz so
wie um die andre Erde, eine Sonne
und ein gestirnter stiller Himmel ging,
ein Klage-Himmel mit entstellten Sternen -:
Diese So-geliebte.
52
53
54
55
56
13
14
Felsen waren da
und wesenlose Wälder, Brücken über Leeres
und jener große graue blinde Teich,
der über seinem fernen Grunde hing
wie Regenhimmel über einer Landschaft.
Und zwischen Wiesen, sanft und voller
Langmut,
erschien des einen Weges blasser Streifen,
wie eine lange Bleiche hingelegt.
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
Sie aber ging an jenes Gottes Hand,
den Schritt beschränkt von langen
Leichenbändern,
unsicher, sanft und ohne Ungeduld.
Sie war in sich, wie Eine hoher Hoffnung,
und dachte nicht des Mannes, der voranging,
und nicht des Weges, der ins Leben aufstieg.
Sie war in sich. Und ihr Gestorbensein
erfüllte sie wie Fülle.
Wie eine Frucht von Süßigkeit und Dunkel,
so war sie voll von ihrem großen Tode,
der also neu war, daß sie nichts begriff.
15
Und dieses einen Weges kamen sie.
16
17
18
19
20
Voran der schlanke Mann im blauen Mantel,
der stumm und ungeduldig vor sich aussah.
Ohne zu kauen fraß sein Schritt den Weg
in großen Bissen; seine Hände hingen
schwer und verschlossen aus dem Fall der
Falten
und wußten nicht mehr von der leichten
Leier,
die in die Linke eingewachsen war
wie Rosenranken in den Ast des Ölbaums.
Und seine Sinne waren wie entzweit:
indes der Blick ihm wie ein Hund vorauslief,
umkehrte, kam und immer wieder weit
und wartend an der nächsten Wendung
stand, blieb sein Gehör wie ein Geruch zurück.
Manchmal erschien es ihm als reichte es
bis an das Gehen jener beiden andern,
die folgen sollten diesem ganzen Aufstieg.
Dann wieder wars nur seines Steigens
Nachklang
und seines Mantels Wind was hinter ihm
war.
Er aber sagte sich, sie kämen doch;
sagte es laut und hörte sich verhallen.
Sie kämen doch, nur wärens zwei
die furchtbar leise gingen. Dürfte er
sich einmal wenden (wäre das Zurückschaun
nicht die Zersetzung dieses ganzen Werkes,
das erst vollbracht wird), müßte er sie sehen,
die beiden Leisen, die ihm schweigend
nachgehn:
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
Sie war in einem neuen Mädchentum
und unberührbar; ihr Geschlecht war zu
wie eine junge Blume gegen Abend,
und ihre Hände waren der Vermählung
so sehr entwöhnt, daß selbst des leichten Gottes
unendlich leise, leitende Berührung
sie kränkte wie zu sehr Vertraulichkeit.
75
76
77
78
Sie war schon nicht mehr diese blonde Frau,
die in des Dichters Liedern manchmal anklang,
nicht mehr des breiten Bettes Duft und Eiland
und jenes Mannes Eigentum nicht mehr.
79
80
81
Sie war schon aufgelöst wie langes Haar
und hingegeben wie gefallner Regen
und ausgeteilt wie hundertfacher Vorrat.
82
Sie war schon Wurzel.
83
84
85
86
Und als plötzlich jäh
der Gott sie anhielt und mit Schmerz im Ausruf
die Worte sprach: Er hat sich umgewendet -,
begriff sie nichts und sagte leise: Wer?
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Fern aber, dunkel vor dem klaren Ausgang,
stand irgend jemand, dessen Angesicht
nicht zu erkennen war. Er stand und sah,
wie auf dem Streifen eines Wiesenpfades
mit trauervollem Blick der Gott der Botschaft
sich schweigend wandte, der Gestalt zu folgen,
die schon zurückging dieses selben Weges,
den Schritt beschränkt von langen
Leichenbändern,
unsicher, sanft und ohne Ungeduld.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
57
58
95
Page 99 of 105
6 Bibliography
A) Abbreviations for writings by T.S. Eliot
MP
"The Metaphysical Poets."
VMP
The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry.
IP
"Imperfect Critics"
TATIT
"Tradition and the Individual Talent."
DIOT
"Donne in Our Time."
TCTC
"To Criticize the Critic."
UPUC
"The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism."
EPM
"Euripides and Professor Murray."
B) Poems examined in the text, chapter 2.2
From: Gardner, Helen (ed.). The Metaphysical Poets. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,
1966:
Donne, John. "Death be not proud" (p. 85)
Marvell, Andrew. "To His Coy Mistress" (p. 250-252); "The Garden" (p. 255-258)
Herbert, George. "Death" (p. 141f)
Vaughan, Henry. "The Water-fall" (p. 282)
Baudelaire, Charles. "The Fountain of Blood"
Browning, Robert. "Magical Nature." In: Pettigrew, John (ed.) Robert Browning - The Poems.
Vol II. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981 (p. 448).
Coleridge, S.T. "Desire" In: Beer, John (ed.) Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems. London et
al.: Dent, 1974. (p. 354).
Dryden, John. "Upon the death of the Lord Hastings" In: Kinsley, Kames (ed.) The poems of
John Dryden. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958 (p. 1-4).
Eliot, T.S. "Whispers of Immortality" In: Eliot, T.S. The Complete Poems And Plays 1909nd
1950. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1974 (22 ed. 1971 ) (p.
32f).
George Gordon, Lord Byron. "And Thou Art Dead, as Young and Fair" In: Cumberledge,
Geoffrey (ed.). The Poetical Works of Lord Byron. London et al.: Oxford
University Press, (repr. 1952) (p. 64f).
Gray, Thomas. "Sonnet on the death of Richard West" In: Starr, H. W. and J.R. Hendrickson
(eds.) . The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray. Claraendon Press, Oxford:
1966. (p. 92).
Hardy, Thomas. "The Dead Man Walking" In: Hynes, Samuel (ed.) The Complete Poetical
Works of Thomas Hardy. Vol I. Oxford, Clarendon Press: 1982 (p. 267f).
The Loss of Unified Experience: Changing Sensibility in English Poetry from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Hopkins, Gerald M. "Spring and Fall." In: Gardner, W.H. and N.H. MacKenzie (eds.). The
th
poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins. 4 ed. London et al.: Oxford University
Press, 1970 (p. 88).
Hughes, Ted. "There came a day" In: Season Songs. London: Faber and Faber, 1976 (p.55).
Keats, John. "When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be." In: Bullet, Gerald (ed.) John Keats
– Poems. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1974 (p. 230)
Larkin, Philipp. "Talking in Bed" and "An Arundel Tomb". In: Thwaite, Anthony (ed. and
Intro.) . Philip Larkin – Complete Poems. Farrar: The Noonday Press, 1993.
(p. 129 and p. 111).
Moore, Thomas. "’Tis the Last Rose of Summer". In: Irish Melodies: National Airs, Sacred
Songs, Ballads. Paris: 1823. (p. )
Pope, Alexander. "The Dying Christian to His Soul" In: Ault, Norman and John Butt (eds.).
Minor Poems. Vol. VI of The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander
Pope. London and New York: Routledge, 1964 (repr. 1993) (p. 94).
Rilke, Rainer Maria "Liebes-Lied" and "Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes." In: Rilke, Rainer Maria.
Ausgewählte Gedichte. Erich Heller (ed.). Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1966
(p. 52 and 33)
Shelley, P.B. "The Flight of Love" and "Love's Philosophy" In: The Complete Works of Percy
Bysshe Shelley. Ingpen, Robert and Walter E. Peck (eds.) London et al.:
Ernest Benn, 1927. (Vol. IV p. 192f and Vol. III p. 299).
Swinburne, Algernon "What is death?" In: Swinburne, Algernon. Tristram of Lyonesse and
th
other Poems. (7 ed.) London: Chatto & Windus, 1903. (p. 261).
Thomas, Dylan. "A Refusal to Mourn the death, by Fire, of a Child in London" In: Collected
Poems 1934-1952. London: J.M. Dent &Sons, 1952 (repr. 1954) (p. 101).
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