The poetic tension: Prophet versus fox in literary creation

“ A strange story it is; one whose hero is mankind—mankind in the bulk, groping, struggling, trying half blindly to adapt himself to the new conditions, and at last, after a desperate period of reconstruction, coming out into the sunlight, triumphant, clean, and at peace. Now and then an individual is caught up for an instant into the story, transfigured for the moment by circumstances into a mouthpiece for the mass of mankind,—a scientist, a middle-class Englishman who wrote his memoirs, the Slavic Fox, a dying prophet of the later age,—but for the most part it is just mankind who speaks. ”

“ The man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or poet. The office is coeval with the world. But observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of the office. The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach ”

“ No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrancy of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language. In Shakespeare’s poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other. At length in the drama they were reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. ”

“ Would you rather be a Homer or an Apollonius? 5 Or take Eratosthenes and his Erigone; because that little work is without a flaw, is he therefore a greater poet than Archilochus, with all his disorderly profusion? greater than that impetuous, that god-gifted genius, which chafed against the restraints of law? or in lyric poetry would you choose to be a Bacchylides or a Pindar? in tragedy a Sophocles or (save the mark!) an Io of Chios? Yet Io and Bacchylides never stumble, their style is 65 always neat, always pretty ”

“ Each craft union is a little republic and has its narrow craft selfishness highly developed through the years of individual craft union struggle. It cannot be relied upon to stand the strain of long drawn out federated fights; and the federations being powerless to control their craft units often go to pieces in the midst of a strike. So long as these little craft republics exist there can be no real unity and solidarity in the Labor movement. Each craft will continue to fight for its own particular place in the Sun, itself deciding just where that particular place shall be. ”

“ The poet can put only a part of himself into any of his heroes, but he must put the whole into his noblest work. A character is accordingly only a fragmentary unity; fragmentary in respect to its origin,—since it is conceived by enlargement, so to speak, of a part of our own being to the exclusion of the rest,—and fragmentary in respect to the object it presents, since a character must live in an environment and be appreciated by contrast and by the sense of derivation. ”

“ The subject of sublimity must naturally have attracted a writer whose own moral nature was xx pure and lofty, who was inclined to discover in moral qualities the true foundation of the highest literary merit. ”

“ His true merit is in his original and, as we think, modern telling of a love tale—pure, passionate, and tender, the first known in literature. Medea is often sublime, and always touching. But it is not on these merits that our author lingers; he loves only the highest literature, and, though he finds spots on the sun and faults Homer, he condones them as oversights passed in the poet’s “contempt of little things.”
Such for us to-day are the lessons of Longinus. He traces dignity and fire of style to dignity and fire of soul. ”

“ To us he is as much a moral as a literary teacher. We admire that Roman greatness of soul in a Greek, and the character of this unknown man, who carried the soul of a poet, the heart of a hero under the gown of a professor. ”

“ If a man does not see somewhat deeper into himself and things than the average human being, never among the sacred band of lyric souls can he find a lasting place. Philosophy is the propaedeutic of poetry. But surely, it may be urged, the book of nature is open to every one, and a poet's soul may sing of that without any need of the philosopher's interpretation. ”

“ This is the imaginative power found in several poets we have mentioned,—the power that gives certain passages in Lucretius also their sublimity, as it gives sublimity to many passages in the Bible.
For what is required for theoretic wholeness is not this or that system but some system. Its value is not the value of truth, but that of victorious imagination. Unity of conception is an æsthetic merit no less than a logical demand. A fine sense of the dignity and pathos of life cannot be attained unless we conceive somehow its outcome and its relations. ”

“ What is poetry?—is so nearly the same question with, what is a poet?—that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts, and emotions of the poet’s own mind.
The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. ”

“ The Sublime, with which he concerns himself, is “a certain loftiness and excellence of language,” which “takes the reader out of himself.... The Sublime, acting with an imperious and irresistible force, sways every reader whether he will or no.” In its own sphere the Sublime does what “natural magic” does in the poetical rendering of nature, and perhaps in the same scarcely-to-be-analysed fashion. Whether this art can be taught or not is a question which the author treats with modesty. ”

“ Hence the most pathetic orators have usually but little skill in panegyric, and conversely those who are powerful in panegyric generally fail in pathos. 4 If, on the other hand, Caecilius supposed that pathos never contributes to sublimity, and this is why he thought it alien to the subject, he is entirely deceived. For I would confidently pronounce that nothing is so conducive to sublimity as an appropriate display of genuine passion, which bursts out with a kind of “fine 15 madness” and divine inspiration, and falls on our ears like the voice of a god. ”

“ How much more do these principles apply to the Sublime in literature, where grandeur is never, as it sometimes is in nature, dissociated from utility and advantage. Therefore all those who have achieved it, however far from faultless, are still more than mortal. When a writer uses any other resource he shows himself to be a man ”

“ Poetry is element. It is irreducible, incorruptible, and refractory. Like the sea, it says each time all it has to say; then it re-begins with a tranquil majesty, and with the inexhaustible variety which belongs only to unity. This diversity in what seems monotonous is the marvel of immensity.
Wave upon wave, billow after billow, foam behind foam, movement and again movement: the Iliad is moving away, the Romancero comes; the Bible sinks, the Koran surges up; after the aquilon Pindar comes the hurricane Dante. Does everlasting poetry repeat itself? ”

“ His contemporaries used to say that, though the Bible were lost, it might be found in the mouth of George Fox, and there is not a line in the Journal to indicate that he undervalued either the Holy Scriptures or the historic work of Christ for human salvation. Entirely the contrary. As soon as he realized that the same God who spoke directly to men in earlier ages still speaks directly, and that to be a man means to have a "seed of God" within, he saw that there were no limits to the possibilities of a human life. ”

“ Unity amongst Fox and his followers is the fruit and fulfilment of separateness. In order truly to love his neighbour, a man must first love himself. He must achieve singleness of soul, must discover that within him which is of God; that which “speaks” with him only in the solitude of his inner being.
The unit, with Fox, is never, except incidentally, the group; never, except incidentally, the family; but the single human soul faced with its individual consciousness, the germ of truth, goodness, beauty, light, love, God, it bears within itself, the seed of God present in all human kind. ”

“ The Lord had said unto me that if but one man or woman were raised by His power to stand and live in the same Spirit that the prophets and apostles were in who gave forth the Scriptures, that man or woman should shake all the country in their profession [S] for ten miles round. For people had the Scriptures, but were not in the same Light, power, and Spirit which those were in who gave forth the Scriptures; so they neither knew God, Christ, nor the Scriptures aright; nor had they unity one with another, being out of the power and Spirit of God. ”

“ As for the affairs of truth in this land and abroad, I hear that in Holland and Germany, and thereaway, Friends are in love, unity, and peace: and in Jamaica, Barbadoes, Nevis, Antigua, Maryland, and New-England, I hear nothing, but Friends are in unity and peace. The Lord preserve them all out of the world (in which there is trouble) in Christ Jesus, in whom there is peace, life, love, and unity. Amen. My love in the Lord Jesus Christ to all Friends everywhere in your land, as though I named them. ”

“ And all janglings about religion upon the earth, and differences about scriptures which the higher power goes upon, given forth from the spirit of God, amongst teachers, professors and people and churches is that they be out of the spirit of Christ the prophets and apostles were in, that gave forth the scriptures, and the servants of God in which spirit they had unity. For the fellowship is in the light, and the unity is in the spirit, and that is the bond of peace amongst people. ”

“ And the God of power and love keep all friends in power, in love, that there be no surmisings, but pure refreshings in the unlimited love of God, which makes one another known in the conscience to read one another’s hearts; being comprehended into this love, it is inseparable and all are here one. And keep in the oneness and note them that cause dissension contrary to the gospel ye have received, that one pure faith may be held in all, to guide and preserve all in the unity of the spirit and bond of peace; all one family of love, children of one father and of the household of God. ”

“ The unity of outward things is imposed on them by the faculty of individuality, and is a mere fiction of the mind. Matter is a creature of the imagination, and is a pure assumption. It is the centre of force, as immaterial as spirit, as ethereal and unsubstantial. ”

“ But supposing now that we assume the existence of a really unblemished and irreproachable writer. Is it not worth while to raise the whole question whether in poetry and prose we should prefer sublimity accompanied by some faults, or a style which never rising above moderate excellence never stumbles and never requires correction? and again, whether the first place in literature is justly to be assigned to the more numerous, or the loftier excellences? ”

“ Is it not by risking nothing, by never aiming high, that a writer of low or middling powers keeps generally clear of faults and secure of blame? whereas the loftier walks of literature are by their very loftiness perilous? 3 I am well aware, again, that there is a law by which in all human productions the weak points catch the eye first, by which their faults 64 remain indelibly stamped on the memory, while their beauties quickly fade away. ”

“ He who makes no slips must be satisfied with negative approbation, but he who is sublime commands positive reverence. 2 Why need I add that each one of those great writers often redeems all his errors by one grand and masterly stroke? But the strongest point of all is that, if you were to pick out all the blunders of Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and all the greatest names in literature, and add them together, they would be found to bear a very small, or rather an infinitesimal proportion to the passages in which 70 these supreme masters have attained absolute perfection. ”

“ Patriots and patrons of the people are now plentiful enough, but in Crabbe's day the work had to be begun; the swinish multitude had yet to be visited in their sties; and the Circe of the modern sorceries of degradation, to feel the hand of a hero upon her, compelling her to restore the swine to their human form. George Crabbe was not merely a poet, but the poet who had the sagacity to see into the real state of things, and the heart to do his duty—the great marks of the true poet, who is necessarily a true and feeling man. ”

“ Alas! when now the gloomy king they wait,
10
'Tis weakness yielding to resistless fate;
Like wretched men upon the ocean cast,
They labour hard and struggle to the last,
"Hope against hope," and wildly gaze around,
In search of help that never shall be found:
Nor, till the last strong billow stops the breath,
Will they believe them in the jaws of Death!
[Pg 199] When these my records I reflecting read,
And find what ills these numerous births succeed ”

“ When the unions amalgamate, as they must, the question of autonomy will be settled once for all. Then all power will be passed on to the industrial center and the crafts will be directed by it, as the individual member is now directed by his local. The industrial union will be the unit of authority. cannot have industrial unity until we have one union with one treasury and one directing center. Federation cannot supply these essentials of unity and therefore has proven a failure, and must make way for the superior form of organization. ”

“ Like the Deity behind this universe, the simple poet hides himself behind his work; he is himself his work, and his work is himself. A man must be no longer worthy of the work, nor understand it, or be tired of it, to be even anxious to learn who is its author. ”

“ One may sometimes affect a light, and sometimes a serious vein, in prose and poetry. He may imitate a solemn scriptural style or the diction of some Greek or Roman author, but underneath it all will be seen the individuality of the writer from which he cannot separate himself any more than he can separate himself from his true form, features, or character. ”

“ Butler failing, there would have been another Butler, either in the same or in some analogous form.
But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, the case is far otherwise. If the man had failed, the power would have failed. In that mode of power which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the man—species was identified with the individual—the poetry was incarnated in the poet.
Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act upon man through his intellectual nature, the very rarest is that which we moderns call the Sublime. ”

“ Here speaks his natural disinterested greatness the author himself is here sublime, and teaches by example as well as precept, for few things are purer than a pure and ardent admiration. The critic is even confident enough to expect to find his own nobility in others, believing that what is truly Sublime “will always please, and please all readers.” And in this universal acceptance by the populace and the literate, by critics and creators, by young and old, he finds the true external canon of sublimity. ”

“ Longinus has just said that a writer should always work with an eye to posterity. If (he adds) he thinks of nothing but the taste and judgment of his contemporaries, he will have no chance of “leaving something so written that the world will not willingly let it die.” ”