Edmund Clarence Stedman

“ We cannot have, we do not need, another Ezekiel, another Dante or Milton. Hugo, the last Vates, was the most self-conscious, and his own deity. A vision of the wisdom and beauty of art has inspired much of the superior poetry of recent times. A few prophetic utterances have been heard, evoked in some struggle of humanity, some battle for liberty of belief or nationality or conduct. Yet I doubt not that, whenever a great cause is in progress,—before its culminating triumph, rather than after,—it will have its impassioned and heroic minstrelsy. The occasion will seek out and inspire its poet. ”

“ Only when it takes wings does it become poetry. As the poet, touched by emotion, rises to enthusiasm and imaginative power or skill, his speech grows rhythmic, and thus puts on the attribute that distinguishes it from every other mode of artistic expression—the guild-mark which, rightly considered, establishes the nature of the thing itself. At this date there is small need to descant upon the universality of rhythm in all relations of force and matter, nor upon its inherent consonance with the lightest, the profoundest, sensations of the living soul. ”

“ Its vibrations excite the reflex action that creates in the mind of the receiver a vision corresponding to the imagination of the poet. Here is its specific eminence: it enables common mortals to think as the poet thinks, to use his wings, move through space and time, and out of space and time, untrammelled as the soul itself; it can feel, moan, weep, laugh, be eloquent, love, hate, aspire, for all and with its maker; can reflect, and know, and ever seek for knowledge; can portray all times and seasons, and describe, express, interpret, the hiddenmost nature of man. ”

“ It is The voice of human brotherhood.the voice of human brotherhood, the blended voice of rich and poor, old and young, the wise and the simple, the statesman and the clown; the brotherhood of an age which, knowing little, comprehending little, could have no refuge save trust in the oracles through which a just and merciful Protector, a pervading Spirit, a living Mediator and Consoler, had been revealed. This being its nature, and as the crowning masterpiece of faith, you find that in various and constructive beauty—as a work of poetic art—it is unparalleled. ”

“ This is because it reads the artist's higher self in his work; there alone it is expressed, and we give him credit for it. The truth of fairy tales is that of beauty; the Florizels and Cinderellas and Percinets are its ideals. Beauty loves the Beast, but the Beast is beauty in disguise. Thus creative taste holds the key to the future, and art for art's sake is a sound motto in so far as beauty is a legitimate end of art. That it is not the sole end of art—life is the lesson of Tennyson's "The Palace of Art." ”

“ No one depicts the American sky, ocean, forest, prairie, more characteristically or with a freer sense of atmosphere; no one is so inclusive of every object, living or inanimate, in the zones covered by our native land. His defects lie in his theory of unvarying realism. Nature's poet must adopt her own method; and she hides the processes that are unpleasant to see or consider. Whitman often dwells upon the under side of things,—the decay, the ferment, the germination, which nature conducts in secret, though out of them she produces new life and beauty. ”

“ His didacticism was inherent in the stiff, vicious, Gallic drum-beat of his artificial style—so falsely called "classical," so opposed to the true and live method of the antique rather than in his genius and quality. It is impossible that one with so marked a poetic temperament, and using verse withal as almost his sole mode of expression, should not have been a poet. In the manner of his time, how far above his rivals! Every active literary period has one poet at least. To me he seems like the tree which, pressed hard about by rocks, adorns them and struggles into growth and leafage. ”

“ Feeling is the excitant of genuine poetry. The Miltonic canon, requiring the sensuous beauty which taste alone insures, demands, last of all, as if laying stress upon its indispensability, that poetry should be passionate. It is the impassioned spirit that awakes the imagination, whose taste becomes alert, that hears whisperings which others do not hear,—which it does not itself hear in calmer periods,—that breaks into lyric fervor and melody, and that arouses kindred spirits with recital of its brave imaginings. ”

“ Mary Shelley objected to it on the score that it had no human interest. It certainly is a kind of aër potabilis, a wine that lacks body; it violates Goethe's dictum, to wit: "Two things are required of the poet and the artist, that he should rise above reality and yet remain within the sphere of the sensuous." But there is always a law above law for genius, and all things are possible to it—even the entrance to a realm not ordered in life and emotion according to the conditions of this palpable warm planet to which our feet are bound. ”

“ The beauty which the painter or poet offers us certainly depends upon the quality of his vision, upon his ability to give us something in accord with general laws, yet deriving a special charm and power from the touch or atmosphere of his personal genius. As each race has its specific mode of vision, so for each there are as many and different impressions and expressions as the race has artists; and the general or academic outlines of perfection being known, the distinctive value of a poem or painting does come from its maker's habit of vision and interpretation. ”

“ Yet even rhyme, in our tongue, has advantages apart from its sound, when so affluent and strong a workman as Browning uses it in some of his most extended poems as a brake on the whirl and rush of an over-productive genius. All the varied potencies of rhythm,—its trinity of time-beat, consonance, and assonance, its repetends and refrains and accidental wandering melodies and surprises,—are the vibrations of the poetic fervor made manifest, and the poet's conveyance of it to his listeners. ”

“ We have the increased stress of breath, the tone, and volume, that sway the listener. You cannot fire his imagination, you cannot rouse your own, in quite cold blood. Profound emotion seems, also, to find the aptest word, the strongest utterance,—not the most voluble or spasmodic,—and to be content with it. Wordsworth speaks of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," while Mill says that "the poetry of a poet is Feeling itself, using thought only as a means of expression." The truth is that passion uses the imagination to supply conceptions for its language. ”

“ And again: "One should be as a vacuum, so to be filled by the universe. Then the universe will fill me, and pour out again." Which dark saying I interpret here as an emblem of the receptivity of the artist to life at large. This it is his function to give out again, illumined, but unadulterate. The story is told, the song chanted, the drama constructed, with the simplest of understandings between audience and maker: as between children at their play, artisans at their handicraft, recounter and hearers around the desert fire. Every literature has more or less of this free, absolute poetry. ”

“ It is wise to discriminate, also, between genius Taste, as distinguished from artistic genius.and natural fineness of taste. The latter, joined with equally natural ambition, has made many a life unhappy that had peculiar opportunities for delight. For surely it is a precious thing to discern and enjoy the beautiful. Taste in art, in selection, in conduct, is the charm that makes for true aristocracy, a gift unspoiled but rather advanced by gentle breeding, a grace in man, and adorable in woman; it is something to rest content with, the happier inasmuch as you add to the happiness of others. ”

“ A masterwork appeals, in time if not immediately, to the people at large as well as to the elect few,—to the former, doubtless, by its obvious intent and fidelity; to the critical, by its ideal and artistic truth; yet I think that the more esoteric quality is felt, if not comprehended, even by the masses,—that this makes, however vaguely and mysteriously, an impression upon their natures. Realism, in the sense of naturalism, is the firm ground of all the arts, but the poet, then, is not a realist merely as concerns the things that are seen. ”

“ But far more Grecian, in temper and philosophy, was Emerson, who found the poet's royal trait to be his cheerfulness, without which "no man can be a poet, for beauty is his aim. ... Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds upon the universe." What diverse interpretations, each a lesson to those who would limit the uncharted range of feeling and art! Yet it is easy to comprehend what Poe meant, and to confess that mortal joy is less intense of expression than mortal grief. ”

“ Among priceless lyrics from the Greek anthology to our own, those of joy and happy love and hope are fair indeed, but those which haunt the memory turn upon the escape—not the retention—of that which is "rich and strange." Their charm is poignant, yet ineffable. The consecration of such enduring melody to regret for the beloved, whose swift, inexplicable transits leave us dreaming of all they might have been, is the voice of our desire that their work, even though perfecting in some unknown region, may not wholly fail upon earth,—that their death may not be quite untimely. ”

“ On the other hand, the poet, imagining situations and experiences, becomes excited through dwelling on them. But whether passion or imagination be first aroused, they speed together like the wind-sired horses of Achilles.
The mere artisan in verse, however adroit, will do Emotion must be unaffected and ideal.well to keep within his liberties. Sometimes you find one affecting the impassioned tone. It is a dangerous test. His wings usually melt in the heat of the flame he would approach. Passion has a finer art than that of the æsthete with whom beauty is the sole end. ”

“ Toil is her inspiration, exploration her instinct: she broods, she suffers, she wonders, but must still explore and design. The new learning is her guide, but to what unknown lands? The clew is almost found, yet still escapes her. Of what use are beauty, love, worship, even justice, when above her are the magic square and numbers of destiny, and the passing-bell that sounds the end of all? ”

“ Nor have I any doubt that for every clear thought, even for every emotion, words have been, or can be, found, as surely as there is a conquest of matter by the spirit; that speech, the soul's utterance, shares the subtilties of its master. Where it seems to fail, the fault is in the speaker. As a race goes on, both its conceptions and its emotions are clearer and richer, and language keeps pace with them. ”

“ Modern imagination goes in a second to the darkness beyond the utmost star, speculates whether the ether itself may not have a limiting surface, is prepared to see at any time a new universe come sailing from the outer void, or to discover a universe within our own under absolutely novel conditions. It posits molecules, atomic rings; it wreaks itself upon the ultimate secrets of existence. But in the practical world our men of action are equally, though often unwittingly, possessed by it. The imagination of inventors, organizers, merchant princes, railway kings, is conceptive and strenuous. ”

“ The law of natural selection conserves artistic beauty in the poem as in the bird and butterfly. Besides, just as gems and gold are hoarded while iron is left to rust, and as paintings that are beautiful in line and color grow costlier with time, so the poetry that has the beauty of true art becomes the heirloom of generations. For beauty seems to consecrate both makers and possessors. ”

“ In any case, it is clear that with respect to inventive surmise the poet is in advance: the investigator, if he would leap to greater discoveries, must have the poetic insight and imagination,—be, in a sense, a poet himself, and exchange the mask and gloves of the alchemist for the soothsayer's wand and mantle. Those of our geologists, biologists, mechanicians, who are not thus poets in spite of themselves must sit below the seers who by intuition strike the trail of new discovery. ”

“ Each of you will find that with which he himself is most in touch, and therewith a motive and a legend—petere altiora. The poet's verse is more than all the learned scholia upon it. He makes it by direct warrant; he produces, and we stand by and often too complacently measure his productions. In no wise can I forget that we are regarding even the lowliest poets from our still lower station; we are like earth-dwellers viewing, comparing, mapping out the stars. Whatsoever their shortcomings, their gift is their own; they bring music and delight and inspiration. ”

“ Not until this has been done will the sculptor superadd the drapery—the costume which, be it the symbol of our fall or of our advancement, distinguishes civilized man from the lower animals. At all events, it is a serious risk for the young artist to forego this progressive craftsmanship. Even a painter will rudely outline his figures according to primitive nature before giving them the clothing, which, however full of grace and meaning, is not themselves. Otherwise he will be a painter of dead garments, not of soul-possessing men and women. ”

“ And so its reading of the book of life, even with our poor vision, is more disciplinary, more instructive in ethics and the conduct of life, than any theoretic preachment. The latter will be colored, more or less, by the temper of the preacher. Besides, through the exaltation to which we are lifted by the poet's large utterance, our vision is quickened: we see, however unconsciously, that earthly tragedies are of passing import,—phenomenal, formative experiences in the measureless progress of the human soul; that life itself is a drama in which we are both spectators and participators ”

“ The greater the poet, the simpler and larger his statement, however fine in detail when need be. Seeking that presentment of human character and experience which is universal, we go to the poets and idylists of the Bible, to Homer and the Attic dramatists, to Cervantes and Shakespeare, to Molière, and to the great novelists of the modern age. In poetry life has never been treated at once with so much intensity and truth, by many contemporaries, as in the Elizabethan period. ”