The Literature of Ecstasy

iscover the "borderland between prose and poetry," there probably would have been little confusion as to what is poetry. He saw there was poetry in the prose mimes of Sophron and Xenarc

for it contains the nucleus of all arguments for pr

, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles them all indiscriminately to the name.[42-A] Even when a treatise on medicine or natural science is brought out in verse, the name of poet is by custom given to the author; and yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common b

of plots rather than of verse; since he is a poet b

again restated by the Italian critic Castelvetro, who in his commentary on Aristotle's Poetics (1570) said that verse is not the essence of poetry, that it does not distinguish it but

. He severely berates Wordsworth and Coleridge for having supported it. He attacks all the critics who countenance it. He adulates Dante's treatise De

ary element in poetry, but often an artificial, hampering enc

glish writers of prose wrote not only rhythmical prose, but emotional or ecstatic prose, or poetry. Professor Saintsbury finds the essence of prose rhythm, in variety and divergence, and he divides prose into three kinds, according to the rhythm. These are hybrid verse-prose, pure highly rhythmed prose, and prose in general. In the first class h

h separates grave novels in verse like Aylmer's Field or Enoch Arden from grave novels not in verse like Silas Marner and Adam Bede, we own we cannot draw with any confidence," and thus comments: "Adam Bede remains prose, and Enoch Arden is commonly set down as poetry and there an end." This impatient remark does not do away with the fact that the story of Hetty

character of language in these cases is entirely different from that in verse, for in verse you have a patterned regular rhythm obeying an artificial law of accents, a continued series of rise and ebb of the voice that must not break down for hundreds and even thousands of monotonous lines. In the rhythm of the natural

t passages of prose have a rhythm which in nowise differs from the rhythm of free verse. He refuses to regard free verse, as some seek to do, as a third medium for poetic expression. He shows that the arrangement of free verse into irregular lines merely calls attention to the rhythms. All prose may be arranged as free verse and all free verse as prose. Since such is the case, all literature of ecstasy in prose has rhythm besides ecstasy and should certainly be calle

r at least some portions of it are separately entitled to that name. If you deny it you will be compelled to maintain that the able unrhythmical prose translations we have of the Greek and Latin poets contain no poetry. In fact the best way to judge if a composition in verse is poetry is, as Goethe and Hearn said, to translate it into the prose of another language; if poetic emotions are n

critics assert that the term prose poetry is a hybrid and a contradiction in terms. The embarrassment of the former and the misconception of the latter will disappear if they remember that th

es of verse just as we have them in prose. Description, narration, exposition, even argument and exclamation, appear in verse as well as in prose. There are, as it has always been recognized, innumerable products in verse that from the nature of their contents are destitute of the attributes of poetry. Humorous and didactic efforts, mere jokes or commonplace sermons, do not become poetical becau

ure it was not classified as poetry. The first English critic who perceived that the authors of such work were really poets and should be designated by their appropriate name was Sir Philip Sidney. He showed that verse was but an ornament and did not make poetry, and that there were many poets, among whom he named Xenophon,

s in novels and romance. Would then the mere superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the name of poems? The answer is, that nothing can permanently please, which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, an

perhaps I should say, a better feeder to a poet, than any man between Milton and Wordsworth. Thomas Moore had the magnanimity to say, 'If Burke and Bacon were not poets (measured lines not being necessary to cons

stram Shandy a greater poet than Cowper, and that Goldsmith was a p

roached poetry without absolutely being poetry, instanci

s Lord Beaconsfield a poet. Matthew Arnold characterized Chateaubriand, Senancour and Guérin poets. B

the reasons for this proposition and demonstrated to us that a long epic poem is but a series of short poems connected by uninspired passages in metre. The same thing may be said of literary verse performances of moderate length. To those who object to using the word "poem" i

rose, than most of Holmes' and Bryant's verse poems are. I see no reason why we should not designate as poetry, prose tales where ecstasy and emotion predominate. Kipling's Brushwood Boy or Bret Harte's Outcasts of Poker Flat is as poetical, I believe, as any tale in Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn. The same laws of emotional appeal are working in the one as

ling these tales of Harte and Kipling poetry, but crowns the same writers' d

piece in verse is often not poetry and that a prose passag

et the particular section, though in metre, is but a dry statement of facts. I quote from Wordsw

est side in

hepherd, Michae

t of heart, and

me had been fr

strength; his

epherd callin

more than o

d to give us some preliminary information so that we could follow his story. Incide

ny of its poetry. The paragraph, of which I give part, is a poem and part of a larger one in prose.

superposing, mingling, melting into one another, dissolving, disappearing to again appear. A more and more restless poignant anxiety passed over all the instruments and expressed a continual and

a poem have been faulty. The error is so perceptible that it is surprising

c quality which gives tone to a literary work or any portion or portions of it. It may exist without figures of speech, rhyme, metre or rhythm.[52-A] Its most natural language is prose or free verse. Let us have no more such classification of literature as fiction, drama, essay, criticism, poetry, etc. There is fiction in verse and there is prose fiction; there are verse dramas and prose plays, etc., and any of these may be steeped in poetry. However, the customary lyric verse may be comprised under the heading of po

if the latter limitation is withdrawn, all our confusion as to what is a poem will disappear. A poem is any literary composition, whether in verse or prose, which as a whole is an imaginative creation, a vehicle of emotion, an expressio

stra, Emerson's Essays, in critical works like Pater's Renaissance, Ruskin's Modern Painters, Wilde's Intentions, in histories like Thucydides's Peloponnesian War and Carlyle's French Revolution, in autobiographie

al literature, sections that have not enough emotion to be regarded as poetry nor are yet arid or passionless enough to be termed science. But the story of Hester Prynne is poetry as truly as the tale of Dido, and undoubtedly you canno

he agonizing grief of the elder Pegotty and of Ham over the elopement of Emily, Ham's betrothed. You recall the love scene telling of the meeting of

ed gold is on the pine-stems. The sun is coming d

d touch the leaves of oaks and the planes and the beeches lucid green, and the pine stems redder gold; leaving the brightest footprint

domain of the Muses. I refer especially to the whole body of unecstatic philosophical, scientific and theological discourses in verse which usurp a name not belonging to them; I refer to much descriptive an

nger's poetical sentiments the result should also be called poetry. It is an easy matter to arrange any fine poetical prose in blank verse or irregular rhythmical lines. Just a few slight verbal changes are necessary. The new product then fulfills

a Fontaine and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are very rich in poetry, but why say that the original prose stories which these poets often re-tell in verse (undoubtedly improving them by their own genius) are not? And who will deny the statement that the best of Scott's novels, say The Heart of Midlothian, contains as much, if not more, poetry than some of his no

t that Julius C?sar is found in every detail in Plutarch's Lives of C?sar, Brutus and Mark Anthony. The dramatist followed the biographer point for point, repeating word for word passages of North's translation, accepting the cha

sage had been written in blank verse it could not have been improved. The poetry is there in the scene itself and not in any possible metre. Other lines might be cited, like Hamlet's remarks to Guildenstern, who tried to pry out his secret and play upon him as upon a pipe; or his reflections on what a wonderful piece of work was man; or his comments over Y

rvedly renowned as the Virgil passage is, I venture to say that it does not as a poem rank higher than some of Conrad's descriptions. One would wish to be informed where the story of ingratitude in Balzac's novel Père Goriot is any the less poetical than that of Shakespeare's verse play King Lear. Why is the succession of ideas in Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra called poetry

tical prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme." He understood and proved that rhythm was not necessary to poetry. He derived the idea of this separate form from Poe and Bertrand. He has been followed by Turgenev, who left us some prose poems which he called Senilia. The reader may recall th

trophe or personification or any other figure of speech; one may dispense with allusions to mythology or the use of any but current expressions and idioms; one may write almost as one talks; and poetry may nevertheless be produced. When Macpherson in the eighteenth century and Chateaubriand in the early part of the nineteenth century g

, who wrote in prose, are not even considered poets, according to academic standards. It is true Ibsen also wrote some lyrics and a few plays in verse, but he is as much a poet in The Wild Duck or The Master Builder as he is in Peer Gynt or Brand. The scenes of Oswald losing his mind at the end of Ghosts or of Ella Rentheim rebuking John Gabriel Borkman for his desertion of her are magnificent poems. As for the poems of Balzac they are to

ht astonish some people if I make a claim for Mark Twain as a poet. But who that has read Huckleberry Finn and recalls the description of the sunrise on the

to disclose Jim's whereabouts and writes a note to that effect. We all recall his mental struggles, how he finally tore the letter, with th

mes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. . . . I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, s

ds none, with charity towards all" as a poet. Indeed, I have been anticipated in the claim t

and metrical literature that we unhesitatingly call poems because they instantly transform us. Just as you never doubted that the speeches of Andromache are poetical and that the catalogue of the ships is not, so you will find it no problem to discard the tedious descrip

ine Comedy and Orlando Furioso. In modern times Byron's Don Juan, Browning's Ring and the Book and Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh are examples of lengthy stories in verse. All of these books are more voluminous than the prose plays, essays, short stories, and novelettes to which we are accustomed. The prose poet may weed out the trifling incidents and expunge the redundant from his composition as easily as the verse writer. Wordy insignificant passages in

ovel in prose. It was the intention of the verse poet to captivate us instantly in these forms. Translate the sonnet or lyric into the prose of another language and the excitement seizes us just as quickly. Poe's Raven is known to French readers chiefly in a literal prose translation. They respond to it as quickly as we do, though they have to forego the rhyme

s of merit fall short of being poetry as a whole or in parts. The ecstasy or emotion is often not concentrated in any particular part of the work. The facts, notions or ideas are

ould just as well have used a modern novel, for the question of metre is never raised in determining the province of poetry, which he differentiates from that of painting. The only place he mentions the prose writer is in the seventeenth section, where he says that the prose writer usually aims only after intelligibility and clarity, whil

visible properties are the fit subjects for painting, while actions or objects which succeed each other in time are the peculiar subjects of poetry, is really also a distinction between the plastic arts and the prose novel or short story. Painting, according to Lessing, was descriptive, poetry

rose is beyond question poetry. He no longer refuses the title of poet to Whitman and he shrinks from denying that the best free verse is poetry. He feels vaguely that since prose is also often rhythmical, the old definition of poetry as an emotional piece of rhythmical writing is faulty, for it must include also emotional rhythmical prose, and he objects to this inclusion. Professor Lowes, who, in his Convention and Revolt in Poetry, recognizes

, and spoiled their effect. Even Milton succumbed to the vice. And Gosse, in his article on "Lyrical Poetry" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, tells us of one Azzi who in 1700 put the book of Genesis into sonnets. Emotional

llelism. But we need not go to the prophets or the Psalms, where we have parallelism, for poetry in the Bible: we have it in the narrative portions, in the stories of Ruth and Joseph. Who does not feel the poetical emotions surge through him as he comes to the forty-fifth chapter of Ge

and he cried, "Cause every man to go out from me." And there stood n

stirred, our aesthetic faculties are touched in the same way if we read a beautiful love letter like one in prose of Eloise's, or a love poem in verse. And it may be said here that no poet has improved upon t

rdsworth and Whitman were poets in their prose critical prefaces as well as in the Lyrical Ballads and Leaves of Grass. As a mat

praying for George Osborne, who was lying dead on his face with a bullet through his heart. This line is poetry, but only by reason of our taking it into consideration with earlier parts of the novel. It could not be published alone, for it would be meaningless. But the same is true of poetry in verse. When Horatio says of Hamlet "now cracks a noble heart," and ho

In his book on the Art of Writing there is a chapter called "On the Difference Between Verse and Prose" which justifies inversion of the natural order of words in verse and affirms that this inversion (of course along with metre and rhyme at will) is the differenc

y to be sung to the harp. Hence there is no further necessity for this inversion of words. The natural order of prose should be retained in emotional writing, with occas

The inference is that they no longer have that accent of poetry. They are not poetry in the prose version, however, because they were not poetry in the original verse order. He

anon his st

top to ken the

e in view, she

rd, or sheep-co

er-Couch's pr

summit might disclose some sign of human habitation-a herd, a she

ke "anon," and "ken," employs inversion like "steps he reared," "none he saw," it is assumed that the passage must be poetry, but it is not,

in literature have been analyzed or paraphrased by biographers and commentators. No one calls these paraphrases poetry. But are we sure that they are not? Are we certain that none of the original emotion or ideas are left intact in the paraphrase? On the contrary, I believe that the poetry still remains in the paraphrase. True, often

radise Lost is considered, no doubt justly, poetry, because of

h the fiel

st; the uncon

revenge, im

never to sub

else not to

to retain the idea, the emotion and a p

e our unconquerable will, our plans for revenge, our eternal hatred, and

e original idea is there, and the passion of the speaker has not been rooted out. All this proves, then, that much of what we

espeare drew his plays. Is there not poetry in the critical discourses about poets where the critic loses himself in the poet's emotio

tful piece of writing. Do not be worried where the poetry is. Rest assured it is there somewhere, for we should judge poetry by the effect on us and not by the compliance with rules of rhythm or any other rules of composition. A

pers. I gladly accept the challenge: there is poetry in the newspapers. When the Spoon River Anthology appeared many critics said it was nothing more than a collection of newspaper obituaries, told in the first person, that

m like a poem. Those especially well written ones of love tragedies are o

nd occasionally by our journalists, and is being read by the general public. It is not the heritage of the professor or the critic. The verse poets and rea

writer as a rule tries to depict emotions from the start. He is greater as a poet than many prose writers, because he poetizes, thinking he must do this naturally in verse, while the prose writer does not believe it is his duty to do so in prose, but he is often a poet because he c

tives recorded with beauty, vividness, interest; there are reflections, insight into human nature that often surpass the works of prose fiction and verse poetry we read. Yet because these

orks of travel a place only as literature, for it is usually conceded that the best books of travel are literature, but I urge that many of these books are in pa

You will find poems in prose not only in the travels of great writers, like Goethe, Taine, Heine, in the works of old writers

even concentrated poetry, more or less rhythmical. You may cull poems out of the prose writings of men in Eng

ion displayed. It is manifestly absurd to crown with the name of poetry every petty emotion or description by some versifier, and deny it to the great dramatists who depict passions and color great ideas with emotion. No one th

ac. I give these more or less recent books as examples. The works are full of emotional passages dealing with crucial events in the lives of the subjects. You will find poetry in f

re often inclined to write their criticism in verse, thinking that thus it became poetry. But it is only the ecstatic presentation of critical ideas that makes criticism poetry, whether in prose or verse. Poets have often described the mission of poetry in verse, and given us genuine poems. Horace

The first is from Swi

im from beyond the darkness of material nature, to tempt or to support, to guide or to restrain. His hardest facts were the vaguest allegories of other men. To him all symbolic things were literal, all literal things symbolic. About his path and about his bed, around his ears and under his eyes, an infinite play of spiritual life seethed and swarmed or shone and sang. Spirits imprisoned in the husk and shell o

m James Thomson's

erness, its joy is never selfish, its grossness is never obscene. It perceives always the profound identity underlying all surface differences. It is a living organism, not a dead aggregate, and its music is the expression of the law of its growth; so that it could no more be set to a different melody than could a rose-tree be consummated with lilies or violets. It is most philosophic when most enthusiastic, the clearest light of its wisdom being shed from the keenest fire of its love. It is a

n Shelley's Defense of Poetry, beginning with the words "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments, etc.," as well as the conclusi

in his work. But no critic has a right to lay down a definition of poetry and insist that metre or rhythm must be employed by a poet. Professor Mackail in his Oxford Lectures on Poetry defines poetry as patterned language, formally and technically, adding that the technical essence of the pattern is the repeat, and that when there is no repeat there is technically no poetry. If this definition were true, then passages in the Bible full of poetry, which use no

ke Aristotle, Horace, Vida, Scaliger, Vossius, Fabricius, Boileau, Pope, Opitz, Gottsched, Dante, are in part obsolete. I do not mean that these worthy works have all to be thrown on the scrap heap. But they laid down absurd rules as to how

, men who knew all the classics and all the books of Europe. They make us regret that the day of the man of learning is over, especially at a time wh

TNO

e italics

." Wordsworth. "The atmosphere wherein all the arts exist is p