Missing Measures: Modern Poetry and the Revolt against Meter 1557281254, 9781557281258

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$22-95

By the close of the nineteenth century, many poets had abandoned rhyme and meter

in favor

of free verse.”

A

decade

ago, very few were paying any attention to prosodic forms. As we approach a new century, a

growing number of younger poets

are reclaiming traditional conventions of prosody.

Missing Measures

is

the

first full

examina-

of the revolt against meter. Timothy Steele, one of the best of those poets who tion

are sometimes called the

“New

treats his subject against a

Formalists,”

backdrop of the

long history of ideas about poetry, formulated first by the ancients and re-examined

and re-interpreted by subsequent Steele offers a fresh perspective

writers.

on the

wholesale departure from tradition proclaimed in modernist critical justifications.

A

rare marriage of clear writing, careful

scholarship,

and bold thinking, Missing

Measures provides a •

vital

movement with

brilliant critical statement.

a

Cl yjxM

BOSTON PUBLIC library

Measures

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2016 with funding from

China-America

Digital

Academic

Library

(CADAL)

https://archive.org/details/missingmeasuresmOOstee

Measures MODERN POETRY AND THE REVOLT AGAINST METER

Timothy

Steele

The University of Arkansas Fayetteville

*

London

*

•

Press

/990

Copyright

©

Timothy

1990 by

Steele

All rights reserved

Manufactured 94 93 92 91

in the

United States of America

54321

90

desicner: Chiquita Babb

typeface: Linotron 202 Granjon typesetter:

G&S

Typesetters, Inc.

printer: Braun-Brumfield,

binder: Braun-Brumfield,

The paper used

mum

Inc.

Inc.

in this publication

meets the mini-

requirements of the American National Stan-

dard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library 1. Materials Z39.48-1984.

©

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CAT A LOC NG- N I

I

PUBLICATION DATA Steele,

Timothy.

modern poetry and meter / Timothy Steele,

Missing measures revolt against

:

the

cm.

p.

Bibliography:

p.

Includes index.

isbn 1-55728-125-4.

— isbn

1-55728-126-2

(pbk.)

Free verse 2.

Poetry,

3.

Poetics.

Modern I.

PN1059.F7S74 809.1

—

— dc2o

History and criticism.

— History and

criticism.

Title.

1990

89-34918 CI P

for Victoria

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix

INTRODUCTION 1.

3

POETRY AND PRECEDENT: THE MODERN MOVEMENT AND FREE VERSE 1.

The

Identification of

Meter with

Dated Diction and Subject Matter 2.

45

Revolution with a Difference:

The Abandonment of Meter 2.

55

“the superior art”: VERSE AND PROSE AND MODERN POETRY 1.

Prose Seeking Order

on the Model of Poetry 2.

The

Shift

from Fiction

to Fiction in Prose 3.

Poetry Seeking

72 in

Meter

81

Freedom

on the Model of Prose 3.

32

Earlier Reformations of Poetic Diction

and Subject Matter 3.

29

95

THE REVERSES OF TIME! THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN VERSE AND POETRY 1.

The Ancient Sources of the Modern Distinction

1

109

12

VII

1

2.

The Renaissance

Conflation of Aristotle,

Quintilian, Plutarch, and Servius 3.

5.

13

The Modern Opposition of Verse

4.

1

and Poetry

149

FREE VERSE AND AESTHETICISM 1.

The Background

2.

Autonomous

3.

From Organic Form

4.

The

5.

Versification as Musical

I

of Aestheticism

Poetry,

174

Autonomous Poet to

Free Verse

188

192

Rise of Music, the Fall of Poetry

Form

7

203

209

SCIENCES OF sentiment:

THE

CRISIS OF

1.

2.

3.

The New as the True: Novelty, Modern Verse, and

Science

228

241

Impersonality and Skepticism: Poet as Scientist

252

Data and Method: Poetry as Fact or Formula

5.

224

Progressive Science, Regressive Poetry?

The 4.

EXPERIMENTAL POETRY

260

Superstition and Experiment

271

CONCLUSION

279

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

295

NOTES

297

INDEX

328

VIII

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To

Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, am indebted tor a fellowship for 1984-85, during which time some of this book was written. Thanks are also owed to The Southwest Review, in whose pages an early version of the first chapter of the hook appeared, and

to

the John

Wayne

Essays, edited

published.

learning of late

J.

V.

I

State University Press, in

whose anthology Conversant

by James McCorkle, a version of the second chapter was

have additionally benefited from the encouragement and

I

many

friends,

Cunningham,

Fields, R. S.

Gwynn,

among them

the late

R. L. Barth,

Edgar Bowers, the

Henri Coulette, Dick Davis, Kenneth

Jack Hagstrom, X.

J.

Kennedy, Anthony Olcott,

Nancy Huddleston Packer, Margaret Peterson, Terry Santos, Alan Shapiro, Donald E. Stanford, Helen Pinkerton Trimpi, Wesley Trimpi, and Clive Wilmer. Special thanks go to Vikram Seth, whose interest in the project and whose good-natured prodding kept the author going when otherwise he might have dropped by the way. Special thanks go as well to Charles Gullans: throughout the period of this book’s writing, he

and

I

have discussed the issues explored

intelligence have been of incalculable help.

Paul G. Naiditch,

who

in I

it,

and

his

sympathy and

feel a similarly

great debt to

read the manuscript chapter by chapter and

was unfailingly generous with suggestions and constructive

who

criticism.

I

should also like to express deep gratitude to Joshua Odell for his friendship and for his singularly heartening concern for this project.

Be

it

noted, finally, that without the support of

book would not have been written.

Its

my

wife Victoria, this

dedication to her reflects

my good

fortune in her faith and companionship.

*

ix

MISSING MEASURES should like to thank these publishers for permission to reprint

I

the following poems:

“The Aim Was Song'' from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem, copyright 1969. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, Inc. “For J.

V.

My

Contemporaries” from The Collected Poems and Epigrams of Cunningham, Swallow Press, copyright 1971. Reprinted with the

permission of

The Ohio

University Press, Athens,

OH.

Ezra Pound’s “Coda,” from Personae, copyright 1926,

New

permission of

is

reprinted by

Directions Publishing Corporation and Faber

&

Faber Limited.

The

prefatory

1976,

poem

to

David Antin’s

reprinted by permission of

is

talking at the boundaries, copyright

New

Directions Publishing Cor-

poration.

“After

Haymaking” by Robert Wells from The

Press, Manchester,

x

Winter’s Tasl(,

Carcanet

England. Reprinted by permission of Carcanet Press.

Measures

Introduction

In an interview with Jules

Huret

March of

in

1891, Ste-

phane Mallarme remarks:

We

now

are

witnessing a spectacle which

unique

in the history of poetry:

with his

own

flute,

every poet

and playing the songs he

truly extraordinary,

is is

going off hy himself

pleases.

For the

first

time

since the beginning of poetry, poets have stopped singing bass. Hitherto, as

you know,

if

they wished to be accompanied, they had to be

content with the great organ of official meter.

T bass.

his It

book endeavors

to explain

why

examines why modern poets,

1

poets stopped singing

a great

many of them

3

at

MISSING MEASURES

least,

abandoned metre

ideas

and conditions

meter

—

of verse

that had,

officiel in

favor of free verse.

that led to the

explores

It

development of verse without

without the regularly measured units of rhythm

from pre-Homeric times onward, defined the structures

of poetic lines.

To

he sure, anticipations of free verse exist prior to the

period. In our language, the

King James Psalms and,

George Saintsbury’s term, the “stave-prose poetry” Macpherson’s Ossianic

epics,

modern

of

to use

James

William Blake’s “Prophetic Books,”

Martin Farquhar Tupper’s Proverbial Philosophy, and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass may be adduced as examples of proto-free verse. Experiments in poetical prose or prose poetry by writers in

German and

French, from Salomon Gessner to Arthur Rimbaud,

could he cited as well. But poets did not consciously write free verse until the mid- to late-i88os. At this time, Gustave

Kahn,

/

Edouard Dujardin, Jean Moreas, Francis VieleGriffin, and others began to publish vers libre, and discussions expounding it and attaching to it that particular phrase, in PariJules Laforgue,

La Vogue and La Revue hidependante and in Albert Mockel’s Belgian journal. La Wallome. In his Premiers

sian journals such as

Poetes

du

Dujardin gives 1886

Vers Libre,

and he marks the

the seminal publications;

ment

vers est libre.”

had been,

and with At

its

won.”

’

in

1889 of Viele-

prefatory manifesto beginning,

this point,

in effect,

“definitive establish-

with the hook publication

of free verse”

Griffin’s joies

to 1888 as the period of

“Le

according to Dujardin, “The battle

He adds that during and

after

1

889 the

became too many to number. Malinterview with Huret two years later,

publications of vers-Iibristes larme’s

comment,

that “every poet

is

in his

going off by himself’ indicates

how

rapidly

and widely the medium had been adopted. Subsequently, favorable and unfavorable analyses of vers libre are

common. Two important

two leading French poets of the time, date “ is Paul Verlaine’s poem, ]' admire lambition

are conducted by the

from

1894.

4

The

first

discussions, important because they

INTRODUCTION du

Vers Libre,"

which appears

Epigrammes and which is the new movement. The second and more

gently skeptical ol

sympathetic

is

in his

“Music and Letters”

the

which Mallarme which he announces:

lecture

Oxford and Cambridge and in bring news and most amazing and unprecedented news. We have been experimenting with verse.’ M And, referring to vers libre by name, Mallarme tells his audiences, maybe the earlidelivers at

—

I

English-speaking ones to hear of the medium, about the

est

innovation. Details of these developments have been or could be debated.

For instance, was Marie Krysinska,

as she affirmed in the intro-

duction to her 1890 Rythmes Pittoresques, which featured poems

had appeared

that

in

first vers-libriste to

assigned to

magazines during the previous decade, the

have gotten into print?

Rimbaud

s

What

role

should be

“Marine” and “Mouvement,” two pieces

in his Illuminations, pieces evidently written in the early 1870s,

but not published until 1886? These are sometimes said to be vers

However, the poet’s own view of them is unknown, and when La Vogue, under Kahn’s editorship, printed the first of the

libre.

pieces,

it

was

set in the

Roman

used for prose rather than the

which suggests tain of

its

1

much

is

clear.

It

was

libre

fact

work were uncer-

at this juncture, in the

and started

and “free

note these circumstances

revolt against

meter had

is

ment, one must examine

it

if

in earlier

way back

is

mid-

to

to cultivate a specific I

shall say

more

verse.”)

not to minimize the fact that the

a considerable prehistory. Indeed, this

one

study stresses that

the

used for verse, a

it

versification free of meter. (Shortly,

about the terms vers

developed

that

that the earliest readers of the

880s, that poets articulated

mode of To

italic

nature.

Yet this late-

type that the journal customarily

to

understand the free verse move-

in light

of ideas about poetry which

periods and which in

to the ancients.

many

instances go

all

Neither would one wish to deny the

relevance to the emergence of free verse of forerunning works

5

MISSING MEASURES

moments

such as those mentioned a few

works represented cases.

More

to the point, their

these

somewhat isolated authors did not call them “free

most part

for the

However,

ago.

special or

verse.”

Though

movement was

the free verse

part of that general revolution in the arts

end

of the nineteenth

this

book

verse

directs

its

movement

in

and the beginning

international

and was

which occurred

at the

of the twentieth century,

attention principally to the leaders of the free

Two

England and America.

related consid-

erations have led to this approach. First, the views of the English

and American experimentalists spects, the international cially

movement

evident in the fourth and

more frequently than

fundamental

in

illustrate,

at large; this fact will

fifth

re-

he espe-

which correlate

chapters,

the case in the earlier chapters ideas

is

expressed by English and American poets with ideas voiced by their counterparts in continental

Europe. Second, the poetic and

critical

writings of the English and

will be

more

familiar

readers of this book.

them ways

to

American experimentalists

and more readily available

And hope 1

that this

book

reexamine those writings, and the

that they perhaps have not

will

to

most

move some

of

issues they raise, in

done previously.

Because modern poetry’s break with meter involves complicated issues

of the

in literary history,

it

may

be helpful to

fairly

summa-

them before proceeding, so as to orient the reader and acquaint him or her with the itinerary that will be followed. rize

to

#

The

first

of the book’s five chapters

which the modern revolution differed

from

earlier revolutions.

volved, as the

modern one

poetic diction

and

instances to

6

in

in

English and American verse

Most

earlier revolutions in-

did in part, a revolt against

subject matter.

which T.

examines the way

Such was the

S. Eliot refers in

case,

discussing his

outmoded to cite two

own

prac-

INTRODUCTION with the revolutions led by Dryden and Wordsworth. In the modern period, however, the English and American experimenticcs,

talists identified

the florid idiom characteristic of much Victorian

verse with meter

itself.

As

a result, they believed that in

order to

get rid of Victorian style they had also to get rid of meter, which of

course had been employed by the Victorians but which was not specifically Victorian,

poets.

having been used by centuries of earlier

When Dryden and Wordsworth objected

to overly-poetical

mannerisms, they did not include conventional metric among the qualities they wished to remove from verse; they continued to write in^the traditional measures of English poetryPln contrast,

modern

poets, in

overthrowing Victorian

style,

overthrew meter

as well.

The

first

chapter also analyzes the

manner

in

which the mod-

ern revolutionaries identified meter not only with Victorian style, but also with a method of reading aloud and scanning English verse that had developed in the nineteenth century. This

of scansion, which became

common when

school curricula and which

method

English poetry entered

was designed

to serve as a teaching

equivalent to the traditional study of classical prosody, involved

speaking

lines of verse in a heavily artificial

and sing-song way

to

bring out their metrical identity. For instance, to demonstrate that Keats s famous line in "The Eve of St. Agnes” was an iambic

pentameter, one would read

it

as follows:

The hare limp’d //ambling through the froze n grass

And one would

render the second line of Shakespeare’s sonnet 76

thus:

So far from vanaHon or quick change

This method of reading and scanning of conventional

lines

of verse.

It

clarifies the metrical

obliterates,

degrees of relative speech stress within

lines,

norm

however, natural

and

it

produced

a

widespread feeling that conventional verse was necesarily “met-

7

S

MISSING MEASURES ronomic” and “rigid.” This feeling that to introduce rhythmical to

some degree from

life

in

turn produced the belief

into verse,

one needed

to depart

metrical norms.

Toward the end of the first chapter, other matters are noted, among them the following one. That the modern revolutionaries did not entirely recognize what they were doing

were merely engaging

lieved they

in the

vations of poetic speech that poets

time to keep poetry

vital

—

circumstance explains why,

modern

is

—

that they be-

kinds of necessary reno-

must undertake from time

to

of the utmost significance. This

wake

in the

triumph of the

of the

revolution, there ensued not a period of stability

and

consolidation (which the leaders of the revolution had hoped for

and anticipated), but

a period of increasing prosodic restlessness

and increasing anxiety about the nature and

status of poetic

structure.

The

first

chapter, then, establishes

two

facts: (i) that the

ern revolutionaries identified diction with meter anti

having made

this identification

earlier

revolutions

—

contrasting the

revolutions

which

dated idiom and subject matter, but which did not question

—

only a

first

As important

as this specification

must have been

earlier periods that did exist in the to give rise to

The second

modern

some

modern

however,

it

poetry.

period which helped

of free verse.

The

book’s

of these factors.

chapter discusses the historical relationship be-

tween verse and prose and the influence

8

meter into

factors that did not exist in

and supported the concept

next four chapters explain

as far as

is,

move-

step in our study. For the singularity of the attack

indicates that there

modern

call

this

criticized

the chapter specifies the singularity of the

attack on meter. is

course of

in the

By documenting and analyzing

modern movement and by

aspect of the

ment with

style.

(2) that,

(and having identified metrical

composition with scansion), they deposed meter

deposing Victorian

mod-

Though

Aesop, the

of the

modern novel on

traditions of prose fiction

fiction of prestige,

go back

from the Greeks

at least

to the

INTRODUCTION eighteenth century,

mostly

is

meter. Moreover, serious prose

in

from Gorgias forward, have looked to the older art of poetry for ways of giving prose shape and order. Much of the writers,

make prose as memorable

history of prose style concerns efforts to

and

as attractive as verse

integrity so that

that of poetry. tells

and

to secure for prose a quasi-metrical

can achieve an emotional power comparable to

it

“The

enthusiastic admirers of Isocrates,” Cicero

us in Orator 174, “extol as the greatest of his accomplishments

that he

was the

first to

introduce rhythm into prose. For

when he

observed that people listened to orators with solemn attention, hut to poets with pleasure, he is said to have sought for rhythms to use in

prose as well, both for their intrinsic

monotony might be

charm and

in

forestalled by variety.”^ Cicero

order that

reminds us

here that, historically, prose develops not merely alongside of verse, but in reference to poetic style

primary

The

and prose imitates it. two hundred years, however, mark

last

meter, and the

compose

modern novel acquires

a

much

a popularity

formerly accorded to epic, verse drama, and

of fiction.

Modern

poets

commonly urge

of its material to prose fiction and that

that material,

Whereas

the

it

must assimilate

in earlier

Many

change.

than

in prose rather

by the end of the nineteenth century, the novel

form

is

art,

the finest fiction writers of the age

tability

and metric. Poetry

in

and respecIndeed,

lyric.

the

is

of

dominant '/

that poetry has lost

if poetry is to

recover

characteristics of the

novel.

times prose writers experimented with incor-

porating verse cadences into prose, poets

now begin

to

experiment

with integrating the relative rhythms of prose into verse. Prose

becomes,

in short, the

primary

art.

Ford and Ezra Pound’s assertion be

at least as well

In this context,

that, as

written as prose

Ford puts

Ford Madox

it,

“verse must 1

if

it

is

to be poetry,”' gets

transmuted into the notion that verse might profitably be written as the novel

is

The second

written

— without

meter.

chapter traces the steps of this process.

chapter concludes with a discussion of the relation of

And

the

modern

9

MISSING MEASURES theories of free verse to ancient theories of prose, particularly the

same

ancient idea that artistic prose should suggest and, at the

The

time, avoid metrical pattern.

modern argument

that the

than metrical poetry

chapter also makes the point

that free verse

— and

form

of

The

is

sophisticated

thus in a sense supersedes

lated to the ancient notion, evidently first

that artistic prose

more

is

it

sounded by

the rightful successor to the

—

is

re-

Isocrates,

more “primitive”

composition represented by poetry. third chapter

examines the modern distinction between

meaning metrically competent writing which lacks pofire, and “poetry,” meaning inspired composition which is

“verse,” etic

independent of conventional rules of etry

versification.

Though

po-

was always, before the modern period, associated with meter,

many

have urged that great poetry

critics of different eras

volves something

more than

metrical

sion,” “concentration”: these are just a

poets

and

their readers have at

essential as (or

formed

One

that poetry

of the qualities that

one time or another

in

the

felt to

modern

be as

The com-

period.

something more than meter

is

into the idea that poetry

finds in

few

“Imitation,” “pas-

even more essential than) meter to true poetry. Yet

an unusual thing happens

monplace

skill.

in-

much modern

is

is

trans-

something other than meter.

criticism, especially in that of Eliot,

the belief that conventional metrical composition

is

less

admirable

than poetry which eschews regular meter in preference for some

more

“difficult” quality of

The verse

rhythm.

third chapter demonstrates that the distinction

and poetry originated

in the

Renaissance,

when

Aristotle’s then recently recovered Poetics conflated

between

readers of

two

of

its

passages with a passage in Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory. In the later

Middle Ages,

Servius’s

Roman

judgment,

civil

wars

is

this in

passage had

On

been conflated with

the Aeneid, that Lucan’s epic about the

a history, not a

lesser extent, a passage

itself

poem.

In addition,

though

from Plutarch’s Moralia figures

to a

in this

matter. Neither Aristotle nor Quintilian (nor Servius nor Plu-

io

1

INTRODUCTION tarch)

makes

anc lent

between verse and poetry. When the authorities are combined, however, the distinction occurs. a distinction

Having made

the distinction, Renaissance readers explore it with reference to the role of imitation in poetry, arguing for and

against three related propositions: (i) that imitation is portant to poetry than is verse; (2) that writers like

more imDante and

Fracastoro,

who

instead of

write in meter hut do not imitate, are “versifiers” poets and (3) that those who compose prose ro;

mances and prose dramas, and who in that process imitate action and life, have a right to the title of “poet,” despite the fact that they do not compose

verse.

in

After the Renaissance,

controx ersy ov er imitation dies is

adapted

to different

comes an important well as

down,

when

the

the verse-poetry distinction

and changing contexts. Eventually,

tool for advocates of

it

be-

poems, short poems longer narrative and dramatic works, without meter.

as

The

it

fourth chapter deals with aesthetics and the ways in which contributes to the rise of nonmetrical poetry. “Aesthetics” is

here to be understood in

its

historical sense, that

is,

in reference to

the theory developed in the eighteenth century that art

cerned with

(to

is

con-

use Kant’s formulation) “taste” and “judgment”

and can be studied and practiced independently of ethical analysis (or practical reason and rational understanding (or “pure rea)

son”). Aestheticism facilitates the

development of nonmetrical

poetry in several ways. For one thing, the aesthetic doctrine that

poems

“autonomous” creations results in an emphasis on internal as opposed to external qualities of poetry. Ford, Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Eliot all argue that the free verse are

movement

involves, in Eliot’s words, “an insistence

inner unity which

which

is

typical.”

is

unique

If

every

pendent internal unity, should create

its

Aestheticism

own

it

upon the

to every

poem, against the outer unity

poem

defined

is

in

follows that every

terms of an inde-

poem may

or even

prosody.

encourages the development of nonmetrical

verse in another respect. In elevating music as the purest of the

1

MISSING MEASURES arts, writers in the aesthetic tradition

ment

which many poets aspire

in

free verse

produce

to musicality.

movement almost unanimously

environ-

a literary

The

leaders of the

medium

explain the

in

terms of music, and they argue that what free verse lacks metricality

remark

makes up

it

for in musicality. In this regard.

that the poet should

“compose

musical phrase, not in sequence of a significant. In the first place,

music has,

verse. In the second place,

(the root

H

doubly

is

which

measure

as the

of

suggests the degree to which meter

inferior.

aesthetic tradition’s concern with organic

tributes to the

organicism

/

”

metronome

word of “metronome”) has come to be viewed as monoto-

nous and

The

it

sequence of the

in the

Pound’s mind, supplanted meter

in

Pound’s

indicates the degree to

it

in

development

— Goethe

form

also con-

For early exponents

of free verse.

and Coleridge may serve

of

examples—

as

organic form and meter are in harmony. This

is

regarded as producing attractive products

an orderly fashion.

in

because nature

During the nineteenth century, however, interpretations ganic theory

alter.

is

of or-

Rather than urging that poets should create, as

nature does, according to certain regulating principles of develop-

ment, some observers contend that poets should function, as nature

functions,

And

unconsciously.

the comeliness of natural objects,

Lawrence, seek those objects.

than

rather

some

poets, such as

is

intentionally

confused comes to be considered truer to nature than

more orderly kind. To

ies clear

H.

the extent that these processes are regarded as

being elementally turbulent or chaotic, verse that

a

I).

determine

to suggest the internal processes that

To

imitating

is

verse of

the extent that metrical speech

embod-

structural principles,

it

is

therefore disparaged as not

only unnecessary to poetical-natural truth but as inappropriate to

it.

Finally, Aestheticism encourages the

metrical verse because

it

frees poetry not only

rational understanding, but

1

2

development

from

its

own

from

of

ethical

non-

and

history. In stressing the

INTRODUCTION autonomy, Aestheticism has the

poet’s

effect,

when

even

ad-

it

dresses matters of artistic metier, of depreciating laws of composition external to the poets individual imagination. Discussing

Williams remarks!

his verse, rule,

even by

syllables, in

my own

which

all

become tiresome

has

rules.

have never been one to write by Let’s begin with the rule of counted I

poems have been written

my

to

hitherto.

So clipped and confident

ear.

dismissal of nearly three millennia of conventional craft not have been possible without a climate of opinion in

poem and each The fifth chapter

each

poetry.

As

that science

one finds

and

is

writers is

is

a figure like

art are not

making

modern

science on

one encounters the

the kinds of advances

Dryden speculating

poets,

and

uneasily that, whereas

distinguished by great science. This uneasiness

grows over time. By the end

modern

would

was distinguished by great poetry, the modern

widely argued that

tion in

treats the influence of

a

which autonomy.

making. This circumstance troubles

the ancient world

world

poet could claim aesthetic

early as the seventeenth century,

idea that poetry

That

art, in

among

of the nineteenth century,

order to insure

it

itself a central posi-

culture, should attempt to achieve the kinds of

quantitative progress of which science

is

capable. Poetry,

it

is

should be “experimental” and produce “breakthroughs” and “d iscoveries.” said,

This concern with “experiment” turns the traditional idea that poetry derives

techniques than from

moral and

social

its

many

its

away from novelty less from its poets

subject matter, the always-changing

conditions of the race and the always-fresh

spectacle that those conditions present.

ence and observing that

its

Looking

achievements often

to

modern

sci-

from

in-

result

ventions or refinements of apparatus, poets seek novelty in the

Many adopt the view that poetry must, as F. E. Hulme says, “find a new technique each generation. Each age must have its own special form of expression .” structural elements of their art.

10

I

he assertion that poetry requires continual technical innova-

!

3

MISSING MEASURES

tion

is

frequently accompanied by

new way

effect that this or that

developments

in

more

specific assertions to the

of writing reflects the latest

science or technology

and

is

thus especially

useful or sophisticated. Certain proponents of automatic free verse, for

example, urge that their poems embody Freud’s theo-

and illuminate the workings of the unconscious mind.

ries

Other poets writing unmeasured verse argue that they are expressing, in a literary sphere, Einstein’s relativity theories.

the

growth

With

contend that they,

of particle physics, yet other poets

by breaking up verse forms, are looking to achieve insights and to release energies

analogous

to those

physicists splitting atomic nuclei.

achieved and released by

Such notions are detrimental

conventional versification because they imply that meter

backward or instrumentally

tually

is

to

intellec-

newer methods of

inferior to

poetic composition.

Science also influences

most

cases, the

comprehensive

it is.

poetry in a related fashion. In

a scientific theory

is,

the better

The modern movement’s

model of

to poetry this

mined

newer

modern

scientific history.

and more

leaders transferred

This transferral under-

the older view that, in poetic composition, the safest guides

are provided by the examples of earlier masterpieces. In addition, the transferral encouraged the notion that the literary past the scientific past, largely irrelevant to present practice.

sumption grew

that

merit great respect, write, as they for a

modern

though a Virgil and it

scientist to

in

like

An

adhere

Shakespeare certainly

as

absurd for

to Ptolemy’s

a

concept of planetary

motion or Galen's doctrine

of the four

model

on poetry was especially crucial

of scientific progress

as-

modern poet to conventional meter as it would be

would be

had written,

a

is,

humors. Imposing the to

Pound and Eliot, who, even as they wrote poems like the Cantos and The Waste laitid, vigorously and sincerely professed an allegiance to tradition. The model of science persuaded them that in breaking with conventional versification, they were contributing to “progress”

*4

— were

serving poetry as earlier masters had

— and

INTRODUCTION that those

who

continued

to write in

meter were,

in contrast,

contributing to poetic stagnation.

The

chapter ends with a discussion of

Fifth

Thomas Manns

Doctor Faustus, which provides an acute analysis of the modern attempt to make art “scientific.” Mann observes, in his portrait of

Adrian Leverkiihn, that when modern art has aimed for scientific novelty and for radical refinements of apparatus, it has tended to

magic and barbarism. Mann’s theme is meter and modern poetry, in that, as much

derail, paradoxically, into

relevant to the issue of

one sympathizes with the objectives of the modern movement, its results have sometimes proved detrimental in ways that Mann

as

describes. T

hough

genuine wish

and

the modernists

to renovate verse

abandoned meter out of

and reconnect

it

a real audience, the effect to a great extent has

poetry of resources that enable

it

to

to a real

a

world

been to deprive

examine human experience

appealingly, distinctively, and meaningfully.

The various issues discussed ways. One of the study’s aims

in this is

modern poetry

spectacle: poets at once.

in

various

to clarify the relationships be-

tween apparently conflicting impulses Superficially,

study are related

of the

modern movement.

presents a fragmented and tangled

and poetry appear

While acknowledging

to be flying off in all directions

this multiplicity, the

remarks that

follow will endeavor to reveal deeper qualities that comprehensively characterize the It

modern

revolution in verse.

probably should also be said that

much

this

study does not deal

with three issues often considered highly pertinent to the

modern revolution in verse. refer to the First World War, to the American rejection of what Emerson called “the courtly muses of I

Europe,”" and

to the suspected influence of

moveable type and

printing on poetic composition. These issues do not receive detailed attention here for

two

reasons. First, the issues have hith-

erto been frequently discussed,

these pages have not. Second,

been

laid

on these

issues.

It

whereas the matters examined

it is

is

possible that

in

undue weight has

legitimate to argue that the free

>5

MISSING MEASURES

movement might not have triumphed had it not been tor the First World War and tor the distrust of authority that the war occasioned. Yet the tree verse movement began well betore the war. What is more, to urge that the trauma of World War accounts tor tree verse begs the question of why earlier poets (e.g., Sophocles and Andrew Marvell) who lived through similar social verse

I

upheaval and violence nevertheless kept writing

may

Related statements verse to

American

be

made about

literary nationalism.

in meter.

the ascription of free

Americans played

a

key

dominant means of poetic our time. The international success of The Waste

role in establishing free verse as the

expression in

Land was

particularly important in raising free verse to a position

of virtual orthodoxy.

It

is

return to a point touched upon earlier,

much

attention as

I

do

to

And,

to

would not devote

as

useful to explore these facts.

Pound,

Eliot,

I

and Williams did

1

not

believe that their views are centrally illustrative of tendencies in

modern

verse in general.

But the tree verse movement was transatlantic, and some of the earliest

developments

in or anticipations of the

Two English examples

European.

are Macpherson’s Ossianic

that

may

movement

are

be usefully cited here

poems and Tupper’s now

largely for-

gotten but once (in the mid-nineteenth century) enormously

popular Proverbial Philosophy. Macpherson’s work stimulated early experiments with prose-poetry; and, without

Whitman’s

originality,

we may

raries often did, that his

King James

observe, as

long loose

Bible, but also to

line

downplaying

Whitman’s contempo-

owes

a debt not only to the

Tupper’s “Rhythmics.”

1

Moreover, the very term “free verse” derives from the French vers libre.

Indeed, English and American poets were generally

slow to naturalize the term into their

term predominated

for

essay, “Reflections

on

some

own

which

16

The French

time. For instance, Eliot, in his 1917

Vers Libre,"

employs

term. In contrast, by the time of his 1942 essay,

language.

also discusses the revolution

solely the

French

“The Music of Poetry” in modern versification,

— INTRODUCTION Eliot speaks of “free verse.”

An

English to discuss free verse in just those words preface (1915) to the

Amy

poetry arranged by the term

first

introduced

is

document

early important

in

the unsigned

is

of the three anthologies of Imagist

Lowell; and

it

is

significant that

in the preface, the principal

when

author of

which was evidently Richard Aldington, it appears between quotation marks and in hyphenated form. “We do not insist upon ‘tree-verse as the only method ol writing poetry,” the preface

“We

states.

that

it

as for a principle of liberty.”

to indicate

Delays

in

its still

1

'

The

phrase,

marks and hyphen would

translated, hut the quotation

is, is

seem

fight for

foreign character.

may

adopting the Anglicized term

partly be ex-

plained by the fact that “free verse” sounds, as Eliot and Williams noted, self-contradictory. This difficulty seems to have been

less

France, perhaps because vers libre derived from and was

felt in

homophonic with

vers libres, a type

of

classical

French poetry

exemplified by La Fontaine’s Fables and Moliere’s Amphitryon,

which was

perfectly metrical. Vers libres, that

are not “free

is,

verses” in the twentieth-century sense; they merely feature a

mixture of different but conventional meters and different sorts of

rhymes and so

brassees (enveloped), sification in

used

its

rhymes

changes

for

forth.

meters and

em-

For a comparable kind of ver-

Pindaric odes.

in

mixture of

plates (couplet), croisees (crossed),

English poetry of the same period,

Abraham Cowley’s

a

To its

we might

think of

the extent that vers libres

varying arrangements of

purposes of emphasis, and for highlighting changes

mood and meaning, we might

also think of later

poems such

in

as

Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” Coventry Patmore’s “Departure,”

and Robert

When

the French experimentalists dropped the “s” from vers

they did so to advocate a

libres,

which, limit,

Frost’s “After Apple-Picking.”

in

new kind

Dujardin’s words, “pushing liberation to

admits an indeterminate number of

assonance

of poetry, a poetry

in

the place of

syllables,

rhyme and even

extreme

its .

.

.

allows

the absence of

l

7

all

MISSING MEASURES appearance of rhyme.

14

Yet because of

resemblance to and

its

aural identity with the traditional term, the French vers libre did

not jar the ear and

As an

aside,

mind

in the

way

that the English

term did.

one might note that shortly before the advent

of

the Symbolists had used an additional phrase, vers

vers libre,

indicate verses that

liberes, to

— though

“liberated” from certain

classical

conventions of French poetry, especially the proscription

against

lines

rhymed and

of longer than Alexandrine length syllabically correspondent.

may have been

vers libre

tional phrase

and by the

facilitated

— were

still

Acceptance of the term

by the currency of this addi-

fact that the poetry

described exhibited,

it

as vers libres did, traditional features of verse.

Furthermore,

much

free verse practice,

wise, reflects ideas about poetry

European Aestheticism but the Neoplatonic belief,

is

back not only

to

Neoplatonism and

to

art traceable

to late-ancient

memorably elaborated by Plotinus

Enneads, that the indeterminate

determinate

and

American and other-

is

in his

mystically liberating, while the

materially confining.

Then,

too,

it

must be

said

that poets like Florace followed metrical conventions of previous

periods and even other countries while insisting as forcefully as

Williams that writers should deal with native subjects and not rely

on materials from foreign models. To urge that

resulted that

from American

literary nationalism leaves

free verse

unexplained,

the fact that literary nationalists of former ages did not

is,

abandon meter.

As

modern

for

printing,

it

obviously has affected our ways of

some cases, of composing verse. Eliot, to cite a well-known instance, composed poems at the typewriter; to appreciate his work, one must recognize that some of it is written looking

at

almost as

and,

much

to the eye, but is

its

in

for the eye as for the ear. Metrical verse

fundamental appeal

the winter of our discontent”

is

to audial perception.

“Now

and “The Hiker’s Companion

California” both occupy thirty-five spaces of type. ventional iambic pentameter; the other

iS

can appeal

is

not.

A

One

is

to

a con-

poet accustomed

INTRODUCTION to

measure

lines in a visual

manner may

more quickly than one who

tion

of this distinc-

lose sight

retains an ear for the measure.

Nevertheless, one should he cautious of overestimating the

and typography on the development of free verse. The visual appearance of the poem on the page has long been appreciated. Shaped or pattern poetry, for example, goes back to effects of type

the Alexandrian period,

and shaped poems were popular

in the

Renaissance. Yet in neither case did the interest in the visual

of shaped verses undermine metric. For example, the

effects

shaped verse of

a

poem such

has regular linear

George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” pattern and stanzaic structure as well as a

And

specific visual aspect.

might observe that

came

verse

as

with regard to moveable type

into being. Free verse in

an age

closely connected to speech

blame Gutenberg

one

existed for over four centuries before free

it

age of printing than

itself,

in

and

is

more

which

an

likely to flourish in

literary culture

is

more

oral traditions. Yet to praise or to

for free verse

is

probably to exaggerate the

influence of printing.

Having explained why

I

do not discuss certain

times considered highly pertinent to the verse,

I

should explain

why do devote a good I

classical texts rarely associated

not like scientific ones.

modern

issues

some-

revolution in

deal of attention to

with the subject. Literary issues are

They can never be

solved once and for

all.

A chemist may determine definitively the properties of a mineral. A poet or critic, however, cannot achieve similar exactitude in determining what constitutes

may

poem

or by

what means

gious,

for.

and

ing them,

Moreover,

to the

must be continually reexamined;

in

address-

attend both to our unique and living

moment

legal ones,

we must

literary issues, like moral, political, reli-

guidance

of earlier

wisdom and

precedent.

New

swers are always needed; old ones are always relevant. previous writers have said about their art their

it

be produced. Proximate solutions are the best that writers

can hope

and

a fine

remarks indicate the ways

in

is

an-

What

illuminating since

which they sought

to resolve

19

MISSING MEASURES matters that writers of every age must address;

less

important

the fact that the very terms with

is

modern debates about poetry have been pursued

hammered out and authors. To the extent

were

meanings

of these

which

are terms that

given significance by Greek and

first

Latin

from

learn

and disappointments.

their successes

No

we can

we understand

that

terms and understand the ways

the original

in

which they

have altered and have been adapted to changing circumstances over time, our understanding of our situation will be richer.

An

We live with

the legacy of the

view was dual.

On

composition. or,

word “poetry” is in order. ancient Greek view of the art. This

additional observation about the

we might

Isocrates,

On

the other hand, poetry

say, “fiction.”

might

was metron, metrical

the one hand, poetry

A

particular writer, such as Plato or

stress the metrical

as Aristotle or Plutarch,

was mimesis, imitation

might

element; another writer, such

stress the

there was no conflict in the duality.

mimetic element. Yet

Not only was most

fiction in

ancient Greece written in verse, but medical, ethical, philosophi-

and cosmological works were commonly written

cal, political,

One

verse as well.

moral and

general.

reason that Plato was so concerned about the

social effects of poetry

medium

regarded as a

One

for the

was

that poetry

communication

was

of

in his

was

reason Aristotle argued that poetry could be

that fiction was, in his day, a

characteristic than

Today

short

To

the situation

is

the extent that

poems

to

lyrics, satires,

much more

in

more com-

specifying

meter was. reversed. Non-literary subjects are rarely

treated in meter. Narrative prose.

time

knowledge

usefully regarded as fictional composition than as metrical

position

in

what

is

it is

and dramatic works are usually

in

possible to apply the older terms for

currently published,

we may

say that even

epigrams, elegies, and the like are mostly written

without meter. Whereas for the Greeks, metrical composition

was the broad base

more

like

20

its

of the literary

narrowing

tip.

pyramid, meter

Whereas ancient

in

our era

is

writers sometimes

INTRODUCTION complained that verse

may

ask, in the

is

all-too-widely practiced,

words of the

Verse a Dying Technique?

title

Edmund

of

modern

writers

Wilson’s essay, “Is

”

As will become evident in this study, certain confusions in modern discussions of verse have resulted from the fact that the legacy of the Greeks has not been adequately recognized and that the difference

between

their situation

We

sufficiently appreciated.

absolute precision

damn

and ours has not been

cannot ask of others or ourselves

when we speak of “poetry,” and we should

not

such terminological imprecisions as must inevitably attend

we

should be aware of

any general discussion of the

art.

something

word and should bear

of the history of the

Yet

this history

mind when we use the word. Though the term “meter” presents fewer problems than “poetry,” it may bear comment as well. The first of the OED's definitions of the word reads, “Any specific form of poetic rhythm, its kind being determined by the character and number of the feet or groups of syllables of which it consists.” Meter involves more than merely a vague property of rhythm. As the definition indiin

1

cates, the

rhythm has

specific form.

discerned and anticipated. true that, for a time in the

Its

It

"

repeats. Its patterns can be

principles are recognizable.

Middle Ages, metra applied

It

is

to Latin

verse in then-declining quantitative meters, as opposed to rithmici versus,

Latin verse in the

rhymed and accentual measures

started to develop in late antiquity. Yet

when,

in the later

Ages, the quantitative measures further declined

moreover, poetry written ing verse in Latin

in the

— “meter,”

that

had

Middle

— and

when,

vernaculars was gradually eclipsin the original sense of “poetic

measure,” was coined afresh by the modern languages.

To came

the extent that vernacular poets in the later Middle to

adopt the principle of regulating the number of syllables

in their lines, a principle central to

the re-minted term

though

Ages

in

ancient versification as well,

may have seemed

vernacular verse

it

especially appropriate, even

was dynamic

stress instead

of dura-

21

MISSING MEASURES tion that provided a defining

The

in the line.

element for the individual syllables

re-minting proved additionally appropriate to the

degree that modern meters such as iambic pentameter are, as

rhythms”

Aristotle says of the ancient metra, “sections of 1

448b! 1 )-

was

lf>

Just as, for

example, the ancient dactylic hexameter

tions of a certain length (six feet), so the

into

is

Poetics

with a certain kind of rhythm (dactylic) cut into sec-

a line

tameter

(

a line

modern iambic pen-

with a certain kind of rhythm (iambic) measured

segments of

a certain

has continued to carry the

length (five

meaning

feet).

“meter”

In any case,

of “poetic

measure” down

to

the present day.

A

key difference between ancient versification and modern

English versification might be mentioned here. This difference involves rhyme. Generally speaking, ancient poets

Greek and Latin

employ rhyme only occasionally and ornamentally. Follow-

ing practices developed in late antiquity and the Latin Middle

Ages, poets in the modern languages often employ rhyme to line-endings. Regular use of “end

rhyme” appears

mark

in verse in the

Romance languages earlier than it does in verse in English. Indeed, end rhyme does not become prominent in English verse until after the

Norman

conquest and after the gradual transfor-

mation of the English language and

its

literature by

Romanic

influences.

In

one sense, end rhyme has allowed poets

in

English a certain

latitude in metrical practice. Admittedly, for the

most

part,

end

rhyme has simply supplemented the traditional procedure of regulating the number of syllables per line. When, for instance, Anne Bradstreet uses end rhyme in “Verses upon the Burning of our House” or Christina Rossetti uses it in “A Pause for Thought,” the device reinforces

and emphasizes the structure of the

lines

by

making them agree with each other in their terminal syllables. Yet on occasion, end rhyme has served as a kind of alternative to the strict regulation of syllabic equivalences

from stanza

22

to stanza. Especially in

poems

from

line to line or

in short lines

or in

INTRODUCTION Simple stanzaic forms, where the structural units are compact and readily apprehensible to the ear, rhyme may provide a definition such that the observance of syllabic equivalences

may

be relaxed

somewhat. Consider, for example, one of 1 homas Hardy’s early poems. Neutral Tones.” The poem consists of four quatrains with an

abba rhyme scheme; the

first

three lines of each quatrain are

tetrameters, while the fourth and final line difficult to fix a definite

them,

we

term

to the

rhythm

is

a trimeter.

of the lines.

If

Yet

we

it is

scan

Hardy mixes iambs and anapests almost

will find that

equally, as in the poem’s third stanza:

The

smile on your ^

w

V

X

mouth was

V

the deadest thing v

x

^

Alive enough to have strength to die; w .

,

And

w “ ' “ «* "T a grin of bitterness

y

^

w

"

v

^

^

Like an ominous bird a-wing

However, the

^

s*

swept thereby

variations in

17 .

.

,

rhythm and

disrupt the poem’s structural integrity. lines, the

fourteenth,

syllable

count do not

Only one of the poem’s

enjambed. Otherwise, the linear units correspond throughout to syntactical units, and the reader pauses at the ends of the lines and hears clearly the four-four-four-three is

pattern of stresses. (This

fourth line

is

true even in the

first

stanza,

where the

noticeably longer than the corresponding lines in the other stanzas; however, there are still three stresses in the line, and it is

clear

is

which

of the syllables are stressed.)

end rhymes knit the

More important,

lines together securely.

A

the

metrician might

rhythm of the poem is “iambic-anapestic”; or since the iambs outnumber the anapests by a slight margin, he or she might call the rhythm “iambic with frequent anapestic substitusay that the

tions.”

But such terms do not entirely

which approaches the condition of tual verse.

suit a

a

sort

poem like Hardy’s, of rhymed accen-

MISSING MEASURES Such

a

technique

may

procedure of the old Germanic tradition, though it

was customarily

in that tradition

internal alliteration rather than

end rhyme that

made

clarified the structure of the line. Yet the point to be

merely that end rhyme has sometimes served clarify the structures of

amples

may

Middle Ages forward,

later

quency

example

it

be found in

is

English verse to

Though

lines.

ex-

periods from the

all

possible that in this area the

It is

of nineteenth century poets

free verse. (T

here

practiced with particular fre-

is

nineteenth century.

in the

in

comparatively loose

of this technique

accentual

reflect the influence of the

encouraged experiments

in

he special case of Gerard Manley Hopkins will be

discussed in chapter two.)

freedoms involved

in

should be noted, however, that the

It

work such

as

Hardy’s are considerably

than those involved in the practice of a retains a recognizable measure, even

For that matter,

isosyllabic

Pound

if it is

less

Hardy

or Williams.

not strictly isosyllabic.

measures themselves have always per-

mitted certain variations. Ancient poets, for instance, were

at

two shorts or

to

points allowed to resolve a long syllable into

contract

two

shorts into a long; English poets have always been

allowed occasional substitutions of variant foot in the line.

Moreover, the free-versers were

opposed not only

To

am

most part

end rhyme.

book examines and

I

wrong way

of the fact that there

itself,

is

no absolutely right

and

them.

I

entertain no hard

nor do

I

think that such definitions

of resolving

definition of poetry

contribute to the health of the ability to

should

I

keenly aware of the complexities of the questions

this

the

dominant

avoid any appearance of authorial presumption,

that

our

for the

to conventional meter, but also to

add or

feet for the

art.

At the same time,

I

believe that

organize thought and speech into measure

most precious endowments

of the

human

race.

fast

is

one

of

To throw away

endowment would be a tragedy. It is unfortunate that in recent years, many proponents of free verse, who have long since

this

overwhelmingly outnumbered the defenders of meter, have adopted the view that meter

24

is

entirely obsolete

and

that

anyone

INTRODUCTION

who

questions this view should be squelched at all costs. Such individuals have imposed, or have attempted to impose, an ortho-

doxy

as rigid

tered

when

I

and

any that the modernists encounreform poetry.

as intolerant as

they undertook to

make some

should like to

the modernists.

writing this book

in

If

further observations concerning

make judgments

obliged at points to

critical

would want the evidence and arguments ing. In suggesting that the in

some

respects,

do

I

modernists

have found myself

I

of them,

to be

I

think they

given a

fair

hear-

may have been misguided

so simply in hopes that the suggestion will

help to bring about a clearer understanding of the revolution they led and a richer consideration of issues that current poetic practice

and theory might address. I admire the modernists’ devotion to poetry and their achievements. But for several generations we have been living with a phenomenon which

I

have elsewhere

called recycled novelty. In ever-narrower ways, the procedures

and ideas

deployed as gain a

more informed awareness

its liabilities

repeat

modern movement have been appropriated and if they were still brand-new and untried. Unless we

of the

its

as well as

its

of the

admirable

modern movement and

vitalities,

shortcomings without capturing

its

we

will

of

continue to

virtues.

Another point regarding the modernists should be mentioned. Some of their programs were to an extent promulgated to shock the middle-brow. And certain readers may feel that it is therefore naive to take their statements and ideas too

Though

much

a healthy caution to the literalist, this

senses unsound.

themselves,

To

begin with,

who were more

it

is

at face value.

view

is

in

other

unjust to the modernists

than mere controversialists. In addi-

some statements and ideas that may have been advanced in the heat of polemical engagement or daredevil iconoclasm have been adopted in a much more solemn fashion by later commention,

tators.

Perhaps

stance,

Pound was

it

is

wise to consider the possibility that, for in-

not entirely serious

when he urged

that con-

ventional iambic verse was “metronomic.” (Since he returns to

25

\S

MISSING MEASURES

this

concept on several occasions

one suspects that he was dead

at different

times

in his career,

whatever the case may

serious.) Yet

be, the concept has

been tremendously influential. For

now, textbooks

one kind or another have, sometimes citing

of

fifty

years

Pound directly, informed readers that regular meter and individual rhythm are mutually exclusive. There is thus good reason to examine the concept and Pound’s exposition of

it

as clearly as

possible.

On

and more simply descriptive

a different

say that this study

is

1

should also

not centrally concerned with analyzing

different species of free verse in

note,

and with speculating about the ways

which these do or do not work. This

fruits that analyses of this type

might

bibliography, English Versification,

yield.

not to disparage the

Yet T. V.

$yo- ig8o, has

F.

fifteen

Brogan’s

pages of

them highly insightful, and similar analyses have continued to appear more or less regularly 18 since Brogan’s work was published. There are, realize, many

entries for such analyses,

some

1

is

of

I

varieties

of free verse, from the long scriptural lines of

to the short

and frequently enjambed

lines

suavely cadenced free verse of Stevens’

Pound’s Cantos E. E.

of Williams, from the

“Snow Man” and some

to the scattery, all-over-the-page

Cummings;

in the cases of

poem, passages

see, in a single

Ford and in

Whitman of

compositions of

Eliot,

we sometimes

free verse alternating

with

passages in regular meter or in lines that hover around a metrical

norm withou

themselves to

worth noting. to explain

,j *

it.

Such differences are

idicated at the outset,

why many modern

poets,

my object

around and shortly

here

is

after the

turn of the century, abandoned the practice of writing metrically, a

practice

which had informed poetic composition

three millennia.

I

do not aim

to provide a

for nearly

taxonomic examination

of the multiplicity of heterogeneous modes that arose during the

modern movement practice.

or that have ramified in subsequent poetic

Such an examination would require an additional and

entirely different book.

26

INTRODUCTION It

to

would

also require an additional

examine

all

and

entirely different

the connections between free verse in

poetry and comparable not to dispute the fact

rise of, for

tionism in painting and atonality in music.

modern

modern

phenomena in other modern arts. This is that many of the ideas that supported the

encouraged the

rise of free verse

book

example, abstrac-

The emphasis

in

on the value of the indeterminate influences and musical arts no less than it influences poetry. The

aesthetics

the visual

same may he

said of the interest in novelties of

And

of scientific progress.

I

discuss, especially in the fifth chapter

of this study, these ideas in relation to

However,

method suggestive

music and painting

as well

draw at every possible point analogies between developments in modern poetry and developments in other arts would detract from this study’s efforts to explain as specifias verse.

cally

and

to

clearly as possible

why many modern

poets were

to

break with the compositional conventions of their

to

abandon meter Finally,

it

may

in favor

own

moved art

and

of free verse.

be helpful to remember, in the course of this

study, an obvious but easily forgotten point. Meters themselves

are abstractions from or selections of certain patterns of speech in a language.

Ancient and modern writers alike

systems establish themselves gradually by

do not

sit

down and

invent them.

They

by the languages they serve. This Latin metric and

its

is

testify that metrical

trial

and

error. Writers

are invented, so to speak,

true, for instance,

even of

appropriations from Greek. Ennius’s great

achievement was not that he arbitrarily willed the hexameter onto the Latin tongue; rather, he demonstrated how the line could be suited to

Roman

speech and to

a

language richer

in

long syllables

and more accentual than Greek. Negative demonstration of this point is supplied in our language by the unsuccessful experiments with

classical

“Areopagus”

measures by Sidney, Dyer, Drant, Spenser, and their circle. Stress plays

a role in English: the

too large and quantity too small

attempted adaptation,

in this case,

'

not work.

1

27

would

MISSING MEASURES

One of

the hopes of the

modern movement

s

leaders

was

that

they overthrew the traditional system of English metric, a

system would generate

itself

out of the ruins.

It

may

if

new

be observed,

by way of concluding this introduction, that the history of

postmodern poetry quences of

28

this

is

hope.

to a great extent the history of the conse-

CHAPTER

Poetry

I

and Precedent:

The Modern Movement

and Free

ture ot the

Verse

The revolt against meter the modern revolution in

most

is

perhaps the most striking fea-

poetry,

and

free verse

significant legacy of that revolution.

— among them Tupper’s — which

Books,’’

Grass

probably

As was noted

introduction, one can cite from earlier periods a

works

is

in the

number of

King James Psalms, Blake’s “Prophetic Proverbial Philosophy, and Whitman’s Leaves of prefigure free verse and which have sometimes the

had that term retrospectively applied theory and practice of

modern

it

was the

authors, such as T. E.

Hulme,

Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, T.

to

them. But

S. Eliot,

and William Carlos

29

MISSING MEASURES Williams, that

made

composition

our

in

dominant medium

tree verse a

an interview

literature. In

in

tor poetic

Antaeus

in 1978,

Stanley Kunitz remarks, “Non-metrical verse has swept the held, so that there

T

is

no longer any

real

adversary trom the metricians.”

hough Kunitz may be overstating

stances

may even now

the case,

1

and though circum-

be altering again to allow the metricians a

voice in contemporary poetry, Kunitz’s assessment of prevailing practice

And

is

accurate: most verse published today

this situation reflects,

among

is

not metrical.

other things, the success of the

modernists’ revolt against meter.

why

many modern poets adopted it, one must first examine what the modern movement’s leaders believed their revolution represented. The To understand how

most crucial point

free verse

in this

regard

developed and

is

that the

modern

so

revolution-

movement was essentially like earlier The modern movement’s leaders commonly

aries believed that their literary revolutions.

argue that theirs subject matter, ernists” of

all

a rebellion against

is

and

as such, precisely the rebellion that

is,

is

of

one

in style

respect, this

evolve and flourish;

if,

and

This

is

which normally

taste.

argument

is

valid.

Poetic conventions

having become established, they are used

poetry suffers a period of decline, it.

time. Free verse, according

a rejection of traditional poetic

too widely and perfunctorily, they

try to revive

its

rather an innovation of the kind

accompanies changes In

life

argument, does not signify

discipline, but

may weaken and

it is

of Victorian verse

fail.

When

only right that poets should

what good poets have always done;

what the modernists were doing when they urged

another respect, however, the argument

modern is

this

is

that the styles

had grown slack and feeble and needed

replaced by an idiom better equipped to treat In

“mod-

ages have had to undertake to keep poetry vitally

engaged with the speech and to this

an antiquated diction and

to be

life.

not sound. In

its

advocacy of free verse, the modern revolution differed from earlier

revolutions.

3°

It

differed from the revolution Euripides led

,

POETRY AND PRECEDENT against Aeschylean style and the revolution Horace led against the literary conservatism of his day; refer to Eliot’s favorite

led against Cleveland

which Wordsworth

examples

—

and

it

from

differed

the revolution

—

to

which Dryden

and the metaphysicals and the revolution

led against the Augustans.

To

be sure, earlier

revolutions frequently entailed the elevation of certain verse

forms

at the

expense of once-prominent ones. Wordsworth and

the Romantics, for instance, cultivated sonnets, ballad stanzas,

and blank verse age

— and

much

— forms

relatively

generally shunned the balanced couplet, in which so

of the poetry of the previous age

Wordsworth did not argue, that

as the

abandoning meter was

faults

is

if

modernists of this century did,

a suitable

means of reforming

not singular. Until this century, virtually

the

all

is

Western

informed by the distinction, perhaps most memorably

enunciated by Aristotle nized

had been composed. Yet

of predecessors. Indeed, historically speaking, free verse

nothing poetry

neglected by the previous

in the

and poetry

(

Rhetoric

3. 8. 2-3),

that prose

general patterns and periods of rhythm

in the specifically

units of meter

(

(

is

orga-

rhythmos )

and regularly ordered rhythmical

metron ).

The modern movement’s

leaders did not entirely

or admit the singularity of free verse.

One

comprehend

reason they did not

that they identified the Victorian diction against

is

which they were

rebelling (and the subject matter associated with the diction) with

metrical composition perse. felt

Having made

this identification, they

that to dispose of objectionable Victorian idiom, they

had

to

dispose of meter. This feeling in turn led the modernists to regard free verse

more

an element of reformed speech than as

as

a

prosodic matter. 7’hey thus overlooked or minimized, especially in the earlier stages of their revolution, the

verse.

This chapter

prosodic oddity of free

will explore the modernists' identification of

idiom and meter and

will clarify the singularity of free verse as

antidote to dated diction and matter.

3

1

an

MISSING MEASURES

The

/.

Identification

of Meter with

Dated Diction and Subject Matter

We may

begin with Eliot.

Though

anticipated or influ-

enced hy Ford, Hulme, and Pound, Eliot became the most popu-

and prestigious figure of the modern movement. Much

lar

sought-after as a public

spokesman

for the

movement, he conse-

quently had the opportunity and encouragement to explain

in a

it

more systematic fashion than his co-revolutionaries. Eliot’s views of the modern revolution and of free verse appear most tellingly in two lectures delivered in the forties, “The Music of Verse,” and the second of his Milton papers. In these lectures, Eliot surveys the

modern movement

umph and

retrospectively, taking for granted

describing what the

participated in

movement meant

three basic and related objectives:

(i)

which was obsolete and unrelated and

who

modern revolution had

the reformation of an idiom

common

to

speech,

reorientation of poetry’s subjects and imagery toward life,

one

to

tri-

it.

Eliot insists in these lectures that the

rary

its

($)

the incorporation into poetic diction of

(2)

the

contempo-

“modern”

words and phrases, words and phrases which had not been previously used in poetry hut which had the capacity to relate poetic

modern

speech to

life in

ways

not. Eliot also states that in

that earlier forms of diction could

having these objectives and

modern revolution was no hy Dryden and Wordsworth.

ing them, the lutions led In his

different

tions in that

it

it

was

pursu-

from the revo-

Milton lecture, Eliot discusses the modern

broad terms, sounding the theme that

in

movement

in

like earlier revolu-

involved an effort to empty poetry of hot air and to

connect poetry to contemporary speech: I

have on several occasions suggested, that the important changes

the idiom of English verse

which are represented hy the names of

Dryden and Wordsworth, may be characterized

32

in

as successful at-

POETRY AND PRECEDENT tempts to escape from a poetic idiom which had ceased to have relation to

Prelaces. in

idiom

metric, a

contemporary speech. This

the sense of Wordsworth’s

is

By the beginning of the present century another revolution

—

such revolutions bring with them an alteration of

anti

new

appeal to the ear

— was

due. (OPP,

It is

He

59 )

.

important to note that Eliot links “idiom” with “metric.”

makes

frequently

this

discusses his feeling that

monial

a

connection,

Murder

two problems

idiom and that of the metric lem)” (OPP,

80). It

is

modern left

really

(it is

when he

instance,

in the Cathedral

to suggest a basis for a truly

then,” he remarks, “were

as, for

was too

cere-

verse drama. “Here,

unsolved: that of the

one and the same prob-

equally important to note that Eliot asserts

that in literary revolutions, an alteration of

idiom

entails

an

al-

teration of metric. Eliot’s association

what

a poet says

and metric are

is

of idiom and metric

related to the

change from generation appear

among

same language.

word

Idiom

different.

is

way

is

in

Though

questionable.

which he

immediate and

says

fluid;

to generation. Differences of

it,

it

idiom

tends to

idiom may

different groups of contemporaries speaking the It

may

in the original

tinctive property.”

be helpful,

in this

regard, to think of the

Greek sense of ididma, “peculiarity” or

Even

a poetic

“dis-

idiom highly informed by stan-

dards of verbal propriety remains a part of language and will vary

and evolve Metric

as is

language does.'

more

stable

and

less local.

It

is

an abstraction;

it

comprises a measure or measures by means of which speech can be organized into particular rhythmical patterns. Poets far apart in

time can use the same meter. Shakespeare and Wordsworth,

though of different eras and outlooks and idioms, both employ iambic pentameter. Indeed, different languages can share the

same meters. Greek and Eatin share the dactylic hexameter, and Russian, German, and English share the iambic tetrameter. (Variations from language to language in phonological and other

33

”

MISSING MEASURES matters will naturally lead to differences

example,

for

tice:

Roman hexameter

compositional prac-

in

poets generally avoid the

Homer and

feminine third-foot caesura often employed by Hesiod; Russian tetrameters tend stresses

— tend

to be, as

more frequently poets

— than

fewer actual speech

Vladimir Nabokov puts English

who are contemporaries or

same metrical form

to feature

4

tetrameters.

)

“scudded"

it,

Furthermore,

near-contemporaries can use the

to entirely

different effects.

The

heroic

couplet, for instance, appears to fine advantage in Robert Frost’s

haunting “Once by the

ningham’s

As

satirical

Pacific," as well as in

some of

|.

V.

Cun-

epigrams.

idiom inevitably

for Eliot’s assertion that alterations of

bring alterations of metric, the assertion

is

not borne out by the

testimony of literary history, certainly not by the testimony Eliot himself

cites.

As we

lution he led,

shall see,

Wordsworth, throughout the revo-

defended conventional meter

position

matter than were

reform poetry,

To

he

Whereas Wordsworth reform poetry by bringing to traditional metrical coma more vigorous language and a more genuine subject

decried the vices of “poetic diction. tried to

as earnestly as

s

in

fashion at the time, Eliot endeavored to

at least in part,

by abandoning conventional meter.

more comprehensively, we may say this of modern revolution. With the best of motives

put the matter

the leaders of the

and intentions, they objected

to the diction

and attendant subject

matter of Victorian verse. Yet they identified Victorian poetry with the metrical system which the Victorians used but which

was not

in itself Victorian,

variety of poets ists’

working

having been used for centuries by

in a variety of styles.

Hence, the modern-

attack on Victorian idiom led to an attack on meter

suggestion that metrical composition was

manner

that Victorian style

In view of the vague

a

outmoded

and

to the

in the

same

was outmoded.

and overly decorative

lyricality of

Victorian verse, the identification of diction with metric

is

much

under-

standable up to a point. Furthermore, though metrical composition does not necessarily cause inflated rhetoric,

34

it

accommodates

POETRY AND PRECEDENT it

more

indulge

readily than prose. in

and

more

a

be encouraged to

may consequently

serious poet, observing this

identify rhetoric with meter.

same time, one should note that such an properties which have been recognized most of literary history.

To

may

insipid poet

exaggerations of style as a result of the special character

of metrical structure; practice,

An

At the

identification confuses as distinguishable for

return to Eliot: discussing the objectives he and early associ-

ates entertained, he goes

wanted

on

to say, in his Milton lecture, that they

which spoke unaffectedly and which took its subjects and vocabulary not from dated canons of taste, but straight from modern life, regardless of its evidently “nonto create a poetry

more specifically observes that this process modernization was to include the incorporation into

poetic" qualities. Eliot

of poetic

verse of elements of speech

which had not been employed by

earlier poets: |I)t

was one

of

our tenets that verse should have the virtues of prose,

that diction should

become assimilated

to cultivated

contemporary

speech, before aspiring to the elevation of poetry. Another tenet that the subject-matter to topics

that

and the imagery

and objects related

we were

to seek the non-poetic, to seek

to transmutation into poetry,

been used

extended

of poetry should be

of a modern

to the life

man

was

or

woman;

even material refractory

and words and phrases which had not

poetry before.

in

(OPP, 160)

In

“The Music of Poetry,"

Eliot advances

arguments much

like

those he advances in his Milton paper. Here, too, Eliot urges that the

modern movement

graph of the

represents, as he puts

essay, “a period of search for a

colloquial idiom" (OPP, 38).

paper, that the led by

it

modern

He contends, as

revolution

is

in the last

para-

proper modern

he does in the Milton

identical to the revolutions

Dryden and Wordsworth:

Every revolution itself to

in

poetry

be a return to

is

apt to be, and sometimes to

common

speech.

That

is

announce

the revolution

35

which

MISSING MEASURES Wordsworth announced in his prefaces, and he was right: but the same revolution had been carried out a century before by Oldham, Waller, Denham and Dryden; and the same revolution was due again something over a century

later.

(OPP, 31)

modern movement

in general,

Eliot speaks in this essay of free verse in particular.

And, with

In addition to speaking to the

regard to the

latter,

who

he suggests that those

question the

legitimacy of free verse are misguided, because they

compared

to the

to see that

and non-metrical verse

the distinction between metrical cally trivial

fail

more profound

distinction

is

basi-

between

good writing and bad:

my view twenty-five years ago by saying that no verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job. No one has better cause to know than I, that a great deal of bad prose As

for “free verse”,

expressed

I

has been written under the

name

of free verse;

though whether

authors wrote bad prose or bad verse, or bad verse another, seems to

me

a

in

one

its

style or in

matter of indifference. {OPP. 37)

Similar arguments appear, Eliot’s

earlier essays,

it

is

Vers Libre ”

“Reflections on

Pound: His Metric and Poetry,” both

is

in

To

Criticize

was then occurring, and he

responsible for the had free verse

importance, inasmuch as in

and “Ezra

on Pound, Eliot comments on the great

proliferation of free verse that

“Who

of

which were originally

of

published in 1917 and both of which are collected the Critic .' In his essay

two

interesting to note, in

its

is

a

says:

question of no

authors would have written bad verse

any form.” Later he adds, “There are not,

as a

two kinds of verse, the strict and the free; there which comes of being so well trained that form can be adapted to the particular purpose

in

matter of

fact,

is

only a mastery

is

an instinct and

hand.”

And

he con-

cludes his “Reflections” by asserting that “the division between

Conservative Verse and vers

good

verse,

libre

bad verse, and chaos”

does not {'I

CC,

exist, for there

167, 172, 189).

is

only

POETRY AND PRECEDENT

We

will return to Eliot’s

view of

For the moment,

this chapter.

embodies attitudes

it

is

free verse

enough

to

toward the end of observe that Eliot

also held by other leaders of the

modern

movement. 1 hese attitudes are especially evident in the literary criticism of Ford Madox Ford. Though mainly remembered today for

his novels,

and he could Thus

Ford began writing

rightly characterize himself, in his 1921

to Revisit, as “the

(T IR,

English

vers libre in the nineties,

doyen

p. 198). In

memoir

of living writers of Vers Libre in

the present study,

will refer to

I

Ford

frequently, not only because his views are representative, but also

because his influence on the development of modern poetry sufficiently recognized, despite the fact that

stressed the

long essay entitled in

some notes

the twenties in

preserved

“The

1

on

vers libre

free verse ap-

Collected

Battle of the Poets” in

for a lecture

New

7

modern movement and

pear most clearly in his preface to his 191

and

Pound repeatedly

importance of Ford’s contributions.

Ford’s views about the

not

is

Poems/

Thus

in a

to Revisit,

which he delivered

in

York City and which Frank MacShane has '

in his Critical Writings

phasizes, as Eliot does, that the

of Ford Madox Ford. Ford em-

modern

pally represented a protest against

revolution in verse princi-

an idiom which had no

rela-

tionship to living language, a desire to connect poetry with

modern

life,

and

a desire to incorporate in poetry the diction

contemporary colloquial speech. Ford,

modern

like Eliot, urges that the

revolution, in possessing these aims,

literary revolutions;

and Ford argues,

of

was

just like earlier

should

too, that free verse

be regarded simply as an instrument for reforming poetic speech

and

as a

medium which

allows a greater genuineness of diction

than that allowed by meter. Ford’s family was related by marriage to the Rossettis, and as a child

Ford was compelled

to attend private readings by poets

including Browning, Tennyson, and the Rossettis themselves. In his lecture

on

vers libre,

Ford describes these readings, and

his

account offers good insight into the reasons for Ford’s subsequent literary rebellion.

When

the poets started to recite,

Ford

tells us,

37

MISSING MEASURES most horrible changes came over these normally nice people.

the

They had,

all,

only to awful

always, on these occasions the aspects and voices, not

High

held their heads

were doing what Tennyson

calls,

hollow O’s and it

—

but they

their voices that did that.

A s.”

went on and on

no-one would ever use,

changing rhythms,

They with admiration: “Mouthing out

was

It

And

altars

unnatural angles and appeared to be suffering the

at

tortures of agonising souls.

their

Drawing Room

Priests before

on!

A long,

to endless

rolling stream, of

monotonous,

fifty

words

polysyllabic, un-

which rhymes went unmeaningly by

in

telegraph posts, every

— and

like the

yards, of a railway journey. (CIV, 157)

Such experiences soured Ford not only on Victorian on traditional poetry

modern movement

He

fustian.

He came

in general.

to feel, as others in the

did, that metrical composition

was inevitably

asked himself, “Is there something about the mere

framing of verse, the mere sound of once throw

its

mind?

|M]ust

practitioner or

it

in the ear, that

devotee into an

its

necessarily quicken

it

artificial

must

at

frame

of

them

to the perception ” the sentimental, the false, the hackneyed aspects of life?

.

only of

verse, but

.

.

The answer was “that

all

with

many

poets

it

clearly, Yes,

must

which

led

Ford

to the conclusion

of necessity write affectedly, at great length,

superfluous words

—

that poetry, of necessity,

was

something boring and pretentious” (CP, 333, 336). For Ford, the affected diction of the Victorians was accompanied by a related literary malady.

The

Victorians failed, in

Ford’s view, to bring an original spirit to the material they treated:

“What worried and

exasperated us in the poems of the late Lord

Tennyson, the

Lewis Morris, the

late

—

well,

late

whom

their imitative

you

like

—

is

late

William Morris, the

not their choice of subject,

handling of matter, of words,

attitude” (CP, 340).

Ford argues,

too, that his

it is

own

it

is

their derivative

experiments

verse are a reaction against such derivative writing

and

in

that they

attempt to address the contemporary world as opposed to the

POETRY AND PRECEDENT mythologial and medieval worlds so frequently addressed by the

He

Victorians. ter

speaks of having “one unflinching aim

my own times in

Eliot does,

terms of my

own

on the importance of

which can render modern

modern

diction

development

subjects. Discussing his

had worked out

poems, and some of the features

to regis-

$27), insisting, as

a specifically

as a poet, he tells us that by 1898 he

lor writing

time” (CP,

—

a

“formula”

formula are

of his

similar to the “tenets” Eliot mentions in his Milton essay.

The

individual articles of the formula, Ford writes, were: that a

poem must

surrounded

that

be

compounded of observation of the everyday

us; that

it

must be written

in exactly

vocabulary as that which one used for one’s prose; that, in verse,

it

must attack some subject

marmoreal treatment than that,

if

it

were

to be

is

needed

that

if

it

life

the

same

were

to be

a slightly

more

expedient for the paragraph of a novel;

rhymed, the rhyme must never lead

introduction of unnecessary thought; and,

lastly, that

to the

no exigency of

metre must interfere with the personal cadence of the writer’s mind or the pressure of the recorded emotion.

TTR

(

As does

Eliot,

Ford suggests

to a dissatisfaction

that free verse

with “dead form” and

is

is

,

206-07)

a logical response

a natural expression

of the desire for a more contemporary and colloquial poetic speech. Speaking of

charter 1914),

imagism

members included

Ford contends

in

(of

which he was one of the eleven

Pound’s Des Imagistes anthology of

that imagistic vers libre

is

not a rebellion

against poetic rigor, but against the rhetorical vices of the previous age.

“The work

is

free,”

Ford comments of the Imagists’ poems,

“of the polysyllabic, honey-dripping and derivative adjectives that, distinguishing the

works of most

makes nineteenth-century poetry as ‘close,’ like the air of a room” (TTR,

a

of their contemporaries,

whole seem greasy and

157).

Ford argues that

his

modernism and free verse embody the same goals and aspirations that good poets have always had: “I would rather read a picture in verse of the emotions and environment of a Goodge Street anar-

39

MISSING MEASURES than recapture what songs the sirens sang. T hat after

chist

what Francois Villon was doing

Ford describes

In his vers libre lecture.

Perhaps recalling Wordsworth speaking to men,” Ford

s

asserts, “I said

in direct

and simple English

apparent here, as

it is

as well as Victorian style.

— and

libre

is.

It

is

man

I

say

now

—

if a

an attempt

libre.

.

.

.

cites as a

that the

credo for vers

really

is

lately

what

themselves

asserts at the

end

of his

“form”: “Objections to vers

world the better” (CW,

in the

vers

done.” With respect to the

Ford simply

a perfectly legitimate

libre

and be

Poet! in thy place,

to let personalities express

None. More forms

And

tongue.”

Ford believes

comments: “That

poetic status of free verse, it is

his

must shed conventional verse

Oddly, Ford

more genuinely than they have lecture that

him hold

in his preface, that

content,” about which he

,

then

let

Wordsworths pentameter, “Shine,

61

more gener-

definition of a poet as “a

poet, in order to speak unaffectedly,

1

free verse

333).

cannot talk like an educated gentleman about things that

matter it is

day” (CP,

was

terms of the modern need for a reform of poetic diction.

ally in

man

for the life of his

all

157,

162).

Many of

the ideas one finds in Eliot

well in Pound. For Pound, too, the a repudiation of Victorian style

toward modern speech and back on the beginnings

was

free verse

and Ford are

modern

In

“A

as

to re-direct poetry

Retrospect,”

imagism and suggests

ol

found

revolution represents

and an attempt

life.

to be

Pound looks

that imagistic

a salutary protest against the poetry of the nine-

teenth century, a period he describes as being “a rather blurry,

messy

sort of a period, a rather sentimentalistic,

mannerish

sort of

Regarding the modern movement, Pound says that

a period.”

aims

at

truer

and sharper-sighted

it

replacing the obsolete bric-a-brac of Victorian style with a

and the poetry which decade or

so,

it

will,

I

I

verse.

Pound

40

to

Twentieth century poetry,

expect to see written during the next

think,

harder and saner. ... At direct, free

“As

move

against poppy-cock,

least for myself,

from emotional

slither” (LE,

1

1,

I

want

it

it

will be

so, austere,

12).

also suggests, in his “Retrospect,” that the

modern

revo-

,

,

POETRY AND PRECEDENT

He

lution bears a healthy resemblance to previous revolutions. tells

when he and H. D. and Richard Aldington decided

us that

in

1912 to form a group dedicated to revitalizing poetry, they

adopted as their

principle, “Direct treatment of the ‘thing’

first

whether subjective or objective.” And evidently this, in Pound’s mind, is exactly the principle earlier poets have embraced when

new

they forged

styles.

Pound comments,

“I

“In the art of Daniel and Cavalcanti,”

have seen that precision which

Victorians, that explicit rendering, be

emotion. Their testimony first

hand.”

Much

“The Serious poetic art” he

the

Artist,”

is

miss in the

of external nature, or of

it

of the eyewitness, their symptoms are

same theme informs Pound’s 1913 essay, in which he argues that the “new sort of

advocating

is

I

not a

“is

new

sort but

an old sort ... a

poetry that can be carried as a communication between intelligent

men” LE (

No

less

3,

1

1,

55).

emphatic on

Poetry on Ford’s verse.

this subject

Pound

praises

is

Pound’s 1914

Ford

article for

for trying to bring the

language of verse up-to-date, and Pound argues that

if

modern

poets wish to refresh their art, they

would do well to follow Ford’s attempt to integrate real speech and real life into poetry. Pound hails Ford’s “On Heaven” as “the best poem yet written in the 'twentieth-century fashion ” and concludes his consideration of

Ford by saying:

“I find

him

significant

and revolutionary because

of his insistence upon clarity and precision, upon the prose tradition; in brief,

upon

efficient

writing

— even

in

verse”

(

LE

373 377 )’

With

respect to free verse,

Pound

presents ideas similar to

Pound

those presented by Eliot and Ford. In his “Retrospect,” stresses the virtues

of “technique,” though he does so

manner, and he seems jettisoned if

it

to feel that conventional

does not

technique as the

test of a

tainable; in the trampling

in a

vague

may

technique

be

suit the poet’s purposes: “I believe in

man’s sincerity;

down

in

law when

it is

ascer-

of every convention that impedes

or obscures the determination of the law, or the precise rendering

of the impulse.”

The

clearest portion of the

“Re Vers Libre”

4

1

MISSING MKASURKS section of Pound’s “Retrospect”

which runs: “Eliot has vers

is

dictum

one-sentence paragraph

a

when he said, ‘No good job.”’ Pound also

said the thing very well

man who wants

libre for the

cites Eliot’s

is

in his

tions lor Poet?y in 1917,

to

do

a

review of Prufroct{ and Other Observa-

and here Pound suggests,

himself, that distinctions between formal

and

does Eliot

as

free verse are not

when compared to distinctions between good and bad “A conviction as to the rightness or wrongness of vers

significant

writing.

Pound

libre," says

at the start of that section of his

to Eliot’s versification, “is

no guarantee of a poet” (LE,

Reading critical statements one hears the themes that especially true of T. E.

idiom

it

modern movement, Ford, and Pound develop. T his is

Eliot,

Hulme and William

and contention

in

1909 (the exact date delivered in 1914). epic subjects

is

and not

is

this

new

the old metre?

first

argues that meter

suitable to the

modern

suitable only to

is

poetic spirit,

spirit,

which

metre to

Are the things

now

that a poet wishes to say I

in

any

believe that they

old poetry dealt essentially with big things, the expression of

is

the exact opposite of this,

has

become

definitely

and

this impressionist poetry

and out of

is

it

and regular .

.

But the

.

no longer deals with heroic

finally introspective.

.

.

.

Regular

cramping, jangling, meaningless,

place. Into the delicate pattern of

images and colour

introduces the heavy, crude pattern of rhetorical verse. (FS, 72-3, 74)

42

is

finds itself unable to express itself in

verse. Action can best he expressed in regular verse.

it

which

and impressionistic:

epic subjects leads naturally to the anatomical matter

action,

One sees on Mod-

delivered in 1908 or

different to the things that former poets say?

modern

reform

that to

not clear; the lecture was revised and re-

Hulme

intimate, introspective,

The

same manner

Hulme’s “Lecture

ern Poetry,” which appears to have been

are.

in the

and Pound do, and both contend

this identification

way

Carlos Williams.

necessary to reject traditional versification.

is

|W|hat

9, 12, 421).

of others in the

Both identify antiquated diction with meter as Eliot, Ford,

review devoted

it

POETRY AND PRECEDENT This argument implies that metrical composition inevitably entails stylistic

exaggeration.

And

virtually identical.

two

in a single phrase,

It

implies that meter and rhetoric are

a little later

when

Hulme explicitly conflates the

he speaks of the “metre of rhetoric”

(FS, 75).

Williams offers

a similar

Boyle. Analyzing the

minimum

argument

in a

modern movement, Williams remarks, “A

new knowledge seems to be this: there work in poetry written in ‘poetic’ diction.

of present

no longer be serious

Kay

1932 letter to

can It is

a contortion

of speech to conform to a rigidity of line” (SL, 134). For Williams, fatuous or awkward diction results not so much

from misuses

of speech as

from

a

property

attributes to the conventional verse line

—

itself.

again appears to equate meter with stale speech

poems pletely

“He

has been led,

else, to

such a very bad approximation,

more by

when he

hails the

—

nected with hackneyed expression.

variously realized in speech. Instead,

Like others that

a

harbor

in the

line, to

line

is

The

is

it is,

inextricably con-

conventional line

in

line,

is

not

which may be

Williams’ arrestingly

with cliches.

modern movement, Hulme and Williams

abandoning

principles which,

filled

think,

The conventional

1

traditional sense as a pattern of potentials

mixed metaphor,

I

the line in which the worst

Williams’ view, has no independence but

its

irritation,

which the conventional

cliches of the art of poetry he anchored.”

rm

Williams

an investigation of the poetic

attack the problem of measure, of

affi

that he

Byron Vazakas’ Transfigured Night as having “comdone away with the poetic line as we know it,” and when

than by anything

seen in

In 1946,

—

of

he says of Vazakas:

in

rigidity

traditional metric

though opposed

verse, are deeply traditional.

to those

This idea

is

an expression of

of nineteenth-century

is

evident in Hulme’s

“Romanticism and Classicism,” written

in

Hulme

Romantic

objects to the “sloppiness” of

1913-

14. In this essay,

verse, and, in

terms resembling those used by Pound, he predicts of the modern

movement,

“I

prophesy that

a

period of dry, hard, classical verse

43

is

MISSING MEASURES coming.” meter

as

11

Williams, too, construes his attack on traditional

an affirmation of time-honored values. In

"Poem

his

as a

Field of Action” essay, Williams, having proposed “sweeping

changes from top to bottom of the poetic structure,” adds: be said that

I

wish

to destroy the past.

honoring

tradition,

tended by

my

it

attack,

and serving

may

precisely a service to

It is

that

it

“It

envisioned and in-

is

and not disfigurement

— confirming and

1

enlarging

its

application.”

one might make

In concluding this section of this chapter,

a

further observation. At times the belief that an overthrow of

conventional metric

is

needed

produce

to

panied by the supposition that the

new

a

new idiom

new idiom

is

accom-

will in turn create a

“Music

metric. For instance, in the last paragraph of his

of

Poetry,” Eliot hopefully envisions an end to the chaotic versifica-

had become the order

tion that

of the day:

“|W]hen we reach

a

point at which the poetic idiom can be stabilized, then a period of

musical elaboration can follow” (OPP, 38). Because Eliot refers to

“musical elaboration” rather than “metrical elaboration,” one

cannot say with certainty that he a

is

urging that stable idiom

is

determinant or a precondition of metrical order. But, as will

become evident

in later chapters, Eliot

an alternative for “meter.” the establishment of the

which the poems Yet

it is

in that

And

it

would seem

new idiom idiom are

unlikely that a

sometimes uses “music”

that he thinks that

measures

will clarify the

mere change

With regard

one might note that simply

of poetic

and more

flexible

model

In addition, since idiom

to the English

to write in a

that the iambic pattern will

idiom

it

would

petrify

will alter

to

new

specifically,

not

mean

provide a clearer

for speech than other possible patterns. is

by

— and

its

nature more or

less fluid,

Nor would one wish it

petrification that the modernists

44

language

new idiom does

suddenly cease

never be entirely “stabilized.” were,

in

to be written.

the basic character of a language or establish grounds for a

metrical system.

as

was

just this

complained

it

it

can

to be. If

it

tendency towards

of in Victorian verse.

,

,

U POETRY AND PRECEDENT

2.

r

har her Reformations of

5

i

Poetic Diction

Most by poets

and Subject Matter modern one was, has grown pompous and must be re-

literary revolutions are led, as the

who

feel that

poetry

fashioned so that

it

abandoning meter

to achieve reformation, the

can speak directly and truly of

Yet in

life.

modern movement is unique. In order to establish both the way the modern revolution resembled earlier revolutions and the way it differed from them in its identification of outmoded idiom with meter and in its advocacy of a poetry free of conventional versification, we should

now

turn to the two ancient literary innovators mentioned above,

Euripides and Horace, and to the two English ones to

whom

Eliot

Dryden and Wordsworth. Though Euripides (as far as we know) did not formally engage

appeals,

in literary criticism, the fact that

tragedy in the second half of the

subsequent ancient writers. traits

which most marked

It

his

fifth

mode of

century b.c.

is

borne out by

equally apparent that the two

is

innovations are

with the modernists of our time. heroic

he consciously revolutionized

First,

traits

we

associate

Euripides objected to the

previous tragedy and insisted on presenting his

much

characters and their world in a “realistic’’ manner, however

such a presentation involved what traditionalists considered to be qualities inappropriate to tragic drama. Second, he rejected the elevated rhetoric that had characterized tragic style since

Aeschylus’ time and wrote

in a style

incorporating the ordinary

speech of his day.

The

Chrysostom [Grantor]).

who

these

of

first (

Oration

14

traits

52)

is

noted by,

among

and Diogenes Eaertius

noted as well by Aristotle ( Poetics

It is

others,

Dio

{Lives, 4.5.6

iqbob^-^),

records that “Sophocles said that he portrayed people as they

ought

to be

and Euripides portrayed them

second of these

traits

—

the adept

as they are.”

1

"

The

and colloquial novelty of Eu-

45

,

MISSING MEASURES

ripides’ diction

Sublime, 40.2)

1,1

—

receives

comment from “Longinus” (On

and from Aristotle Rhetoric (

sion of art-which-hides-art: “Art

is

the

3.2.5) in his discus-

when

cleverly concealed

the

speaker chooses his words from ordinary language ( eidthyias dialektou )

and puts them together

like Euripides,

who was the

first

to

show the way.” Even if one lacked the evidence of such commentators, one would have ample testimony about Euripides’ innovations and about the controversy they excited. This additional testimony supplied by Aristophanes’ The Frogs

1

,

which provides perhaps

the earliest extended examination of a literary revolution several lines of which,

an epigraph

The second

to

“The

half of

is

it

Thus

Battle of the Poets” essay in

consists of a formal debate beas judge.

somewhat stodgy defender of conventions, and Euripides is cast in the role of the wily and

Aeschylus

is

cast in the role of the

newfangled parvenu. The debate takes place the

as

to Revisit.

tween Aeschylus and Euripides with Dionysus serving older

and

Ford uses

interesting to note,

The Frogs

is

in Pluto’s palace in

Underworld, where Aeschylus, who has long occupied the

honorary Chair of Tragedy, finds

his position

challenged by the

arrival of the recently deceased Euripides. (Aristophanes’ play

was

first

staged in 405 b.c., the year after Euripides’ death.)

The

charges which Euripides levels at the older Aeschylus and the

terms with which Euripides

justifies

his

own

innovations re-

semble strikingly statements made by the modernists of our time. For example, Euripides claims that Aeschylus (l{ompophal{elorremona,

“boast-bundle-phrased

”)

is

bombastic

(839)

and

ar-

gues (907 ff.) that Aeschylus’ tragedies are the works of an overly poetical impostor (alazon). So wildly inflated is Aeschylus’ style, Euripides says (926), that (agnota );

it

is

at

times downright unintelligible

and, with a colorful metaphor, he alleges (937-44) that,

under Aeschylus’ influence, tragedy sickly bloating ( oidousan ), which,

itself

into a state of

however, has since been happily

alleviated by strong doses of modernity.

46

grew

“When

I

took over Trag-

)

POETRY AND PRECEDENT edy from you," Euripides says to Aeschylus, “the poor creature

was

in a dreadful state. Fatty

up with

degeneration of the Art. All swollen

high-falutin’ diction.

I

soon got her weight down,

though: put her on a diet of particles, with a logic (taken peripatetically),

and

for his

own “new"

style,

finely

a special decoction

cooked up from books and strained

As

little

chopped

of dialectic,

to facilitate digestion.”

Euripides boasts (959) that he did

not rely on the grandiose and fabulous. Instead, “I wrote about familiar things ( oikeia pragmat’ eisagon), things the audience

Nor

about.

did he, he adds (1058), bludgeon the audience with

big words or befuddle

spoke

in

“human

them with resonant

terms’

(

man”). Euripides further

ment or “padding” saphes )

knew

and “acute”

(

obscurities; no, he

phrazein anthrdpeids, “language

states

(1

to

178) that he avoided inane orna-

and that

stoiben

man

leptos ). Indeed,

his writing

was “clear”

when

Euripides speaks (941) of the way he “reduced” tragedy, the term he employs, ischnana, (

(

indicates not only “spare,” but suggests the ischnos character of

the classical plain style

itself,

which Euripides helped

— Dionysus

That Euripides ultimately

loses the

Aeschylus because he

sounder ethical guide than

is

a

stylistically sophisticated rival is

important

is

debate

— does

to found.

favoring his

more

not concern us here.

What

simply the similarity between Euripides’ ideas and

innovations and those of the leaders of the

modern movement

in

our century. Issues like those raised by Euripides’ literary epistles.

figure, for

would be wrong

It

Horace repeatedly urges

work appear

to call

Horace

a

in

Horace’s

Euripidean

that poetry should feature

both moral concern and technical finesse, and he seeks to heal the

kinds of breaches between ethics and aesthetics depicted Frogs.

Horace

is

in

The

nevertheless staunchly opposed to the literary

conservatism of his day.

He

particularly objects to critical tastes

which encouraged archaizing tendencies and which favored older

Roman to

poetry at the expense of contemporary verse. I n his Epistle

Augustus

s

(2.

),’ 1

he protests (18-49) against the sort of

47

critic

)

1

MISSING MEASURES approves only of the old and says (76-77, 90-91): “I am impatient that any work is censured, not because it is thought to

who

he coarse or inelegant in style, but because .

.

.

to us,

what

Horace

in these

days would be ancient?

Poetic diction

dialect;

it

).

it is

”

furthermore that poetry ought to assimilate

insists

contemporary usage and ought life.

(

novelty ( novitas had been as offensive to the Greeks as

|f

1

modern nuper

is

it

is

to

aim

at a plausible

not, he urges, a static

must change

as

language

treatment of

and time-hallowed

changes and must stay

itself

related to living speech. In the second of his Epistles to Julius

Florus is

(2.2), for

at liberty to

need

instance,

Horace contends

renew and

“Terms long

arises:

in

15-

1

19) that the poet

language of verse

alter the lost

(1

when

the

darkness the good poet will

unearth for the people’s use and bring into the

light.

.

.

.

New

ones he will adopt which Use has fathered and brought forth ( quae genitor produxerit usus)."

And Horace

expatiates on this point in

Epistle 2.3, the Art of Poetry. “| A]ll mortal things shall perish,” he

“much less shall the glory and glamour of speech endure and live. Many terms that have fallen out of use shall be born again, and those shall fall that are now in repute, if Usage so says (68-72),

will

it (si

and the rule

far

lies

the judgment, the right

of speech.”

In the Art oj Poetry, in his

whose hands

volet usus), in

Horace

also

makes

the point, as Eliot does

Milton lecture, that periodic renovations of poetic diction,

from harming

verse, are necessary

as Eliot observes that

he and

and healthy. Moreover,

his fellow

modernists wanted to

employ “words and phrases which had not been used before,” so

Horace affirms (48—5 3)

just

that the poet

in

poetry

may update and

transform idiom as his subject matter requires: “If haply one must

betoken abstruse things by novel terms, you will have a chance to fashion

words never heard

of by the kilted

mans!, and licence will be granted,

words, though

new and

they spring from a

48

of recent

it

Cethegi ancient Ro|

used with modesty; while

make,

will

win acceptance,

if

Greek fount and are drawn therefrom but

POETRY AND PRECEDENT

more personal

sparingly.” In a

Horace continues this arguown modernity of speech: “ W|hy tone,

ment (55-59) by defending his should be grudged the right of adding, I

when

the tongue of Cato

and

speech and brought to light It

of

|

if

I

can,

my

little

fund,

Ennius has enriched our mother-

new terms nova nomina) (

for things?

has ever been, and ever will be, permitted to issue words

stamped with the mint-mark of the day.” These sentiments are in turn related to Horaces belief that the poet must not simply follow literary conventions, but must directly address

training. Yet

Horace

life.

Horace always

stresses the value

through training alone the poet

in the

will achieve

little.

As

Art of Poetry says (318-23) in his discussion of

drama, once the poet has mastered the then “look to

of literary

life

and manners

living words.” Significantly,

for a

tools of his trade,

he should

model, and draw from thence

when Horace surveys Roman drama,

he expresses the opinion (285-88) that Latin writers have most

when

excelled

they have tackled native subjects instead of re-

hearsing the standard ones of Greek literature:

have

left

no

style untried,

nor has

least

“Our own

poets

honour been earned when

they have dared to leave the footsteps of the Greeks and sing of

deeds

home, whether they have put native tragedies or native

at

comedies on the stage.” Though the comparison may seem fetched, in this respect alists like

Williams,

Horace resembles modern

who wish

own environment and

far-

literary nation-

to see poets address subjects of their

not rely on plots and subjects imported

from other eras and other countries.

There Horace

is

is

a

related

as impatient as

point.

Ford

Though formidably is

with what Ford

calls

well-read, “imitative

handling of matter, of words” and “derivative attitude.” In the earlier of his

two

Epistles to julius Florus (1.3),

Horace inquires

young poet Celsus Albinovanus and says (14-20) he hopes that Albinovanus is composing poems which refiect his experience and not just his perusals of the works of others in the after the

library in the

temple of Apollo on the Palatine: “What, pray,

49

is

)

MISSING MEASURES Celsus doing?

home

search for ings

He was

warned, and must often be warned

to

from touching the writ-

treasures, anti to shrink

which Apollo on the Palatine has admitted:

lest,

some day

if

perchance the Hock of birds come to reclaim their plumage, the poor crow, stripped of his stolen colours, awake laughter. these remarks,

He

tion.

is,

Horace

is

knowledge

not disparaging a

however, insisting that

a

' 1

In

of tradi-

must not he over-

poet

bookish and over-literary, but must produce work which

is

dis-

tinctly his.

Horace spect.

As

our time

also resembles the modernists of

in this re-

and convention, he

well as objecting to dead diction

argues that prosaic speech can be serviceably deployed in verse.

He

says in

prose''

(

one

of his early Satires (1.4) that his diction

sermoni propriora and that

his satires

and rhythm'' tempora

their “regular beat

would

if

were deprived of

scarcely retain any poetic features whatever.

manner

even the best

style.

say (1.4.38-44,

Of

Horace never

represents the only or

his Satires themselves,

63-65) that

“akin to

certa modosque), they

(

suggests that this conversational

is

he goes so far as to

writing them he does not view

in

himself as a poet and raises the question of whether satire can strictly

be

deemed

poetry, so

humble

is

the speech in

which

it

is

written.

At the same time, Horace emphasizes plain diction, adroitly

elevated skillful

style.

If

managed,

simple speech

weaving together

is

is

in the

Art of Poetry that

preferable to a continually

characterized by mnctura

(a

of words), calliditas (an artful dexterity

of arrangement), and urbanitas (an engaging refinement),

it

can

achieve effects unattainable by a grander manner. Discussing

Horace speaks (240-4}) of his be a poetry, so moulded from the

specifically the quality of iunctura,

own

objectives:

familiar that

much and power

“My aim

anybody may hope

yet toil in vain

of order

for the

same

when attempting

success,

may sweat

the same: such

and connexion, such the beauty

the commonplace.’’

5°

shall

that

is

the

may crown

Horace appreciates the middle and high

POETRY AND PRECEDENT styles, skillfully

used; for that matter, he uses

them himself in the

Odes. Yet, regarding style, he appears to share Eliot’s view that

become assimilated

“diction should

contemporary

to cultivated

speech, before aspiring to the elevation of poetry.” Until, that

one can cleverly and succeed

makes

more

in

manage

effectively

plain diction,

one

is,

will not

Horace thus

rarefied or heroic composition.

the point with respect to poetry that Cicero, in Orator

98-99, had

made with

earlier

plain diction

is

competency

respect to oratory:

valuable not only in

sary foundation for the speaker

who

itself;

is

it

in

as well the neces-

wishes to ascend to the high

manner. Like Aristophanes’ Euripides and like Horace, Dryden stresses the value of an unaffected

and contemporary poetic idiom.

In-

deed, this aspect of Dryden’s thought provides the governing

theme

of the three

BBC lectures on Dryden

“What Dryden

in 1931:

and devise

did, in fact,

and decadent one.

verse to the condition of speech.” is

evident in

two of his tion of

Poesy:

earliest

much

in 1668.

The because

Essay,

"

.

.

reform the language,

to the Earl

.

[H|e restored English

Dryden’s emphasis on natu-

of his writing,

and best-known

The Rival Ladies

An

to

Eliot delivered

a natural, conversational style of speech in verse in

place of an artificial

ralness

was

which

nowhere more

so than in

critical pieces, his

1664 dedica-

of Orrery and

Of Dramatic

which was composed

in

his

1665-66 and published

21

dedication to The Rival Ladies in

Dryden

it

is

particularly relevant

explicitly advocates a poetry

which has the

character of “ordinary speaking” and which possesses “the negli-

gence of prose”

we should in

(

ODP

1

17).

Dryden

uses the

note, not in the sense of “carelessness,” but in the sense

which Cicero uses the word ( neglegentia )

plain style

word “negligence,”

—

in the sense

of uncosmetically attractive [Orator,

Because The Rival Ladies because some

critics

in his definition of the

is

78).

not only in meter, but in rhyme, and

of Dryden’s day were arguing that rhyme

in

Dryden

is

dramatic verse produced an inevitably

stilted quality,

5

1

MISSING MEASURES

rhyme can be harmonized with colloquial expression. Inielicites may occur, Dryden concedes, when a poet uses rhyme ineptly; by the same token, however, when rhyme is expertly employed "the first word in the

making

specially interested in

the point that

verse seems to beget the second,

comes

the last

would be

so;

its

virtues of fluent

own” (ODP, and

that be-

till

:y).

i

flexible style are discussed at greater

OfDramatic Poesy: An

length in

that the next,

word in the line which, in the negligence ol prose, it must then be granted, rhyme has all the advan-

tages of prose besides

The

and

Essay.

Among the many topics the

four disputants in the dialogue examine are the condition of

English verse in

in the

immediately preceding age and the direction

which contemporary verse might profitably move. Eugenius,

one of the two characters

own

views,

makes

a

who

express,

it is

widely

Dryden’s

felt,

number of statements resembling

those

made

by Eliot, Ford, and Pound. For example, Eugenius argues that the metaphysical poetry so popular with the previous generation hopelessly

stiff

and

false.

Speaking

Eugenius suggests that using words ner

may

to

do

John Cleveland

of in

s

is

work,

an odd or distorted man-

be permissible on occasion, but this always,

and never be able

to write a line

without

it,

though

may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language; and is most to be admired when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly received that it is understood by the meanest apprehensions, as the best meat is the most easily digested: but we cannot read a verse of Cleveland’s without making a face at it, as if every word were a pill to swallow: he gives us many times a hard nut to break our it

teeth,

without a kernel for our pains. {ODP,

i :

In another section of the dialogue,

which essay.

is

not unlike that which

Pound

Eugenius takes

40)

a position

takes in his “Retrospect”

This position involves the argument that the innovations of

52

POETRY AND PRECEDENT newer writers assaults

on the

Denham

Waller and

like

are in no

way

seditious

art of poetry, hut are instead a healthy reaction

against the vices of a worn-out

mode;

it is

noteworthy that

who

juncture, no one else in the dialogue, not even Crites,

generally skeptical of the achievements of poses Eugenius.

On

the contrary,

Dryden

modern

is

writers, op-

reports, “every

how much our poesy some writers yet living, who first

at this

one was

willing to acknowledge

is

happiness of

taught us to

improved by the

mould

our thoughts into easy and significant words, to retrench the superfluities of expression,

part of the verse that

it

time.

it"

(ODP,

i

Dryden

and is

a

(to

use Pound’s phrase) “efficient writing’’ in

champion

OfDramatic Poesy

reflects issues

to the eighteenth century.

we

in

origins in the Italian

entailed a comparison of

and moderns

in various fields,

will see in the fifth chapter

of this study,

the principal points that

modern

sciences

of a cumulative progress unavailable to the

modern

At the same time, Dryden

that the

stoutly defends the claims of the

poets against the claims of the ancients.

dramatists especially, nality of their plots ally

its

England and France down

Dryden was uneasily aware of one of emerged during the Quarrel, namely, were capable

his

debated during the Quarrel

The Quarrel

the achievements of the ancients

including poetry. As

and

of the literature of his nation

Renaissance and which continued

modern

itself

124-25).

of the Ancients and Moderns, which had

arts.

so properly a

should also observe that, as well as recommending natu-

ralness of style verse,

make our rhyme

to

should never mislead the sense, but

be led and governed by

One

and

Dryden

and

feels,

deserve credit for the origi-

lively characterizations.

Neander, commonly thought

Modern English Eugenius and

to be the character

his

who most

Dryden himself, argue that the ancients recycled in their plays the same stories again and again and did not present the entertaining and realistic varieties of mood found in modern nearly reflects

dramas. in

If it

would be an exaggeration

terms of the Poundian program

of

to portray

“Make

It

Dryden’s views

New,’’

it is

53

never-

\

MISSING MEASURES theless the case that Drytlen

temporary

in

many

of the

interested in,

is

ways

that

Pound,

and

values, the con-

Ford, Hulme,

Eliot,

and Williams do. Before moving to the final section of this chapter,

we may

whom we find many of

the ideas

briefiy consider

we have

Wordsworth,

discovered

in the

in

we have examined. In the Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth

other poets

preface to the second edition of

announces that

his

work

inane phraseology of

many modern

and capricious habits

trary

gests, are

writers" and against “arbi-

of expression.”

connected with another literary

from genuine experience

in

ing

it

and in

Such

habits, he sug-

vice: the

turning aside

order “to trick out or to elevate

SPP 446, 447, 454). Of his own poetry, Wordsworth avows

nature”

gaudiness and

a reaction against “the

is

(

was “to choose incidents and

to relate or describe

a selection of

that his object in writ-

situations

them, throughout, as

language

really

from

common

far as

was

life,

possible

used by men.” Wordsworth

further stresses that the poet should not dwell in a private lexicon,

among

a

circumscribed

set of

“poetical” subjects. Rather, the

work should partake of a general sympathy, and the poet must remember that “Poets do not write for Poets alone, but for men” {SPP, 446, 457). Like earlier and later poetic innovators, Wordsworth contends poet

s

that the language of poetry should have

virtues of prose.” In fact, in his preface,

what

Eliot calls “the

Wordsworth argues

“that

not only the language of a large portion of every good poem, even

most elevated character, must

of the

erence to the metre, but likewise that

poems prose

will be

is

any

some

found

well written.”

go further. be,

in

It

may

no respect of the

necessarily, except with ref-

differ

good

language of prose

subsequently, he remarks:

between the language

metrical composition” {SPP, 450, 451).

prose,

parts of the best

be safely affirmed, that there neither

essential difference

54

that of

most interesting

to be strictly the

And

from

when

“We is,

will

nor can

of prose

and

POETRY AND PRECEDENT Like other innovators, Wordsworth wants to free poetry from stale idiom and wants to write directly and freshly. Of his verse in

general, he says:

have

times endeavoured to look steadily at my subject; consequently, there is I hope in these Poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed I

at all

in

fitted to their respective

importance” (SPP,

language

The aim

is true speech, a poetry that communicates with clarity and energy to readers, a poetry not dependent on antiquated diction and

450).

mannerism.

Revolution with a Difference:

3.

The Abandonment of Meter If

a reader of

Roman

poetry had fallen asleep in 45 b.c. twenty-five years later to find at his bedside

and had awakened Horace s Lpodes and the

three books of Odes, he might well

first

have been astonished on unrolling the

and presentation reader, at least

forms.

If

scrolls.

The

would have seemed most unusual. Yet the the educated one, would have recognized the verse of

it

he had wished, he could have traced

continuity

all

poet’s material

way back

the

to the misty

iambic and melic poetry. Similarly, asleep in 1775 anc

^

fi a(J

awakened

find the Lyrical Ballads, he

if an

a

in his

mind

their

beginnings of Cireek

English reader had fallen

quarter of a century later to

might well have been

startled by the

and manner of “Tintern Abbey” or “Her Eyes Are Wild.” would, however, have had no difficulty determining that the

subject

He

was

conventional blank verse and the second mainly in rhymed iambic tetrameters. If a reader had fallen asleep in 1900 first

in

and had awakened

in

1925 to find Ford’s

On Heaven,

Eliot’s

The

Waste Land, and Pound’s Draft of XVI Cantos, it is likely he would have been very confused by the versification in the books.

This

is

the singularity of the

modern movement.

It

broke with

55

,

MISSING MEASURES traditional versification. Like earlier revolutionaries, those ol this

century urged that poetry should free earlier revolutionaries, they

wanted

immediacy and genuine

colloquial

aries did not argue, to cite

itself of stilted

idiom. Like

which incorporated

a poetry

But earlier revolution-

feeling.

Ford once more, “that no exigency

of

metre must interfere with the personal cadence of the writer’s

mind

or the pressure of the recorded emotion”

Euripides' metrical virtuosity

monodies 1331

ff.),

is

one can follow,

The

these solo arias

graphy (and

by

line

seem

their

to

what Euripides

line,

sometimes outlandish emotionalism)

master of traditional

'

“And

lest

measures and form

much in his

he

insists

no way diminishes

me

with

rhythm

the

in his

how manlike Sappho moulds Archilochus; how Alcaeus moulds

of

“My own

delight

He

experiments, however, are carried out

To speak

moment

a

model, he

is

forms, ballades and

queathed

to

practices,

an innovative poet. His

in the

context of metrical

whom

of Villon,

rondeaux,

earlier poets like

The same circumstance applies modern

is

to

his,

differs.”

Ford and Pound

shockingly original; yet he writes in

metrical

him by

to

is

her

As Horace shut up words in feet

themes and arrangement he

{me pedibus delectat claudere verba)."

refer to as a

feared to change the

I

of verse, see

says in Satire 2.1.28,

of

doing

as

you should crown

Epodes and Odes, “because

in the

tradition.

is

wreath,” he remarks (26-29), discussing his achieve-

a scantier

though

Frogs

adaptions of earlier forms,

in his

craft. In fact, in Epistle 1.19,

claim to originality.

Muse by

in

Horace, however innovative

that maintaining conventional versification in

ments

in the astrophic

have concerned their music and choreo-

treatment of subject matter and

a poet’s

206-07).

accusations of licentiousness directed against

as their rhythmical character.

a

Even

TTR

Aristophanes

of the late plays (parodied by

metrically.

is

legendary.

(

strict

which had been be-

Deschamps and Machaut.

Dryden. Though

Dryden throughout

his criticism

a

defender

emphasizes

common those who

the value of metrical composition. Indeed, one of the

themes

of his essays, dedications,

have difficulty writing naturally

5^

and prefaces

in verse

is

that

should blame themselves

\

POETRY AND PRECEDENT and not

medium. In his dedication to The Rival Ladies, Dryden admits that rhyme can result in awkwardness but adds that it does so only “when the poet either makes a vicious choice of their

words, or places them, for rhyme sake, so unnaturally as no man would in ordinary speaking.” This argument appears as well in

Of Dramatic

which Neander comments

Poesy, in

that “the neces-

rhyme never forces any hut bad or lazy writers to say what they would not otherwise.” The fact that Dryden himself, later in sity of a

his career,

abandoned the use

of

rhyme

in his

dramatic works

not of consequence in the present context, for he

makes much

is

the

same arguments about unrhymed metrical composition that he makes about rhymed metrical composition. For instance, in the section of the Essay in

which Neander discusses rhyme, he also cites a line of blank verse containing two clumsy inversions, “I heaven invoke, and strong resistance make,” and remarks: “[YJou would think me very ridiculous if 1 should accuse the stubbornness of blank verse for the poet”

(

ODP

1

this,

and not rather the

stiffness

of

17, 81, 82).

Nor

does Dryden see any contradiction between seeking a prose-like directness of speech and writing in conventional measure.

This indeed

is

section of the Religio Lain,

poem's heroic couplets

Thus have

I

makes

a point that he

where he

in the

concluding

ascribes the simplicity of the

to his didactic objectives:

made my own

opinions clear;

Yet neither praise expect, nor censure fear:

And As

this unpolish’d,

fittest for

rugged verse,

discourse,

I

chose,

and nearest prose. 24

(451-54)

As Dryden’s

lines imply, style

metrically in the plain style as styles.

is

it is

in the last

“I

as possible to write

is

middle and high

summarized

in a state-

paragraph of a Defense which he wrote

for his CJf Dramatic Poesy in the it.

It is

to write in the

Dryden’s attitude about meter

ment he makes on

not meter.

wake of Robert Howard’s

attack

have observed,” says Dryden, “that none have been

57

MISSING MEASURES violent against verse, but such only as have not attempted

have succeeded

in their attempt''

ill

Wordsworth,

too,

is

a strong

{ODP,

i

:

defender of meter, and his pref-

the former establish a salutary

|T]he distinction of metre

is

produced by what

and subject

trary,

bond between

that the

mercy of the

is

usually called poetic diction, arbi-

to infinite caprices

Poet, respecting

upon which no calculation

case, the

Reader

is

utterly at the

what imagery or diction he may choose

with the passion; whereas,

certain laws, to

the two:

regular and uniform, and not, like that

whatever can be made. In the one

to connect

— arguing

harmful barrier between reader and poet, but that

latter create a

is

values.

its

carefully distinguishes the conventions of meter

from the conventions of “poetic diction”

which

or

129-30).

ace to Lyrical Ballads has an eloquent explanation of

Wordsworth

it,

in the other, the

metre obeys

which the Poet and Reader both willingly submit

because they are certain, and because no interference

is

made by them

with the passion, hut such as the concurring testimony of ages has

shown

to

heighten and improve the pleasure which co-exists with (spp,

Wordsworth also discusses charm which, by the consent exist in metrical

for the reader

language.”

— of

the nature of meter of

all

nations,

is

it.

457-58)

itself

and “the

acknowledged

to

He speaks of the happy effect of meter

the “small, but continual

and regular impulses

of pleasurable surprise from the metrical arrangement” and of “the pleasure which the

mind

derives from the perception of

similitude in dissimilitude” {SPP, 458, 459, 460).

worth speaks

as well of the

fundamental and wonderful paradox

of successful metrical composition: and,

at

the

norm of a

same time,

is

And Words-

it

is

speech which

is

natural

ordered within and played off against the

fixed line:

Now

the music of

culty

overcome, and the blind association of pleasure which has been

harmonious metrical language, the sense of diffi-

previously received from works of

rhyme

or metre of the

similar construction, an indistinct perception perpetually

5^

same or

renewed of

POETRY AND PRECEDENT language closely resembling that of stance of metre, differing from

make up

a

complex

real life,

so widely

it

and

—

all

view

of

hard

to

these imperceptibly

feeling of delight. (

In

circum-

yet, in the

SPP 460-61) ,

Dryden’s and Wordworth's statements, one may find it hard to comprehend how Eliot could repeatedly justify vers libie by appealing to their authority. In a broader sense, one may find

it

comprehend how

the modernists of our time could

argue so forcefully that their revolution, which developed and expressed itself practically speaking through free verse, was

—

like earlier literary revolutions.

terprise was, at least in first

and foremost

its initial

their views

Admittedly, the modernists' en-

They wanted poems published

stages, polemical.

heard and their

and read. Like many polemicists, they may have availed themselves of evidence which supported their cause and suppressed evidence which did not. Yet this is neither a complete nor a fair explanation of their use of the past and their sincere desire to

reform poetry. There were factors times

in the cultural life

of their

which did not in earlier periods exist or exert determining power that helped give rise to free verse. factors

—

Some

a

of these factors are explored in later chapters. Before

concluding

this chapter,

these matters.

The

we

will look at a single topic related to

topic involves a certain demonstrable

misun-

derstanding of English versification that seems to have prevailed

among getic

the

and

modern

revolutionaries, especially the critically ener-

influential

Pound. The misunderstanding concerns

a

confusion of scansion with actual metrical practice. In an inter-

view

in a recent issue

of The Iowa Review,

J.

V.

Cunningham

suggests that the misunderstanding occurred in part on account of that

method of reading and scanning

that developed

schools in the nineteenth century,

when English

academic curricula and there arose

a

lent to the traditional study

need for

the

poetry entered

a teaching

equiva-

of classical prosody. This method of

reading and scanning entails speaking lines of verse

nounced and sing-song way

in

to

in a pro-

bring out their metrical identity:

59

MISSING MEASURES

And Melancholy

mark’d him for her own

the first mild day of

It is

This

March

murmuring pines and

the forest primeval, the

is

the

hemlocks

Such reading

clarifies the metrical

norm

of lines, hut

it

obliter-

ates natural degrees of relative speech stress within lines.

It

also

distorts the nature of the English language, for English does not

consist of inherently unaccented

and accented

and forms

of syllables of different degrees

determined by syntactic context

phonemic character

that

of accent,

as well as

its

It

consists

and these are

by the phonetic and

of the syllables themselves.

and scanning, whatever highly

syllables.

Emphatic reading

pedagogic virtues, thus produces

As Cunningham says, “If you tried to talk any other situation, you would be thought to be

artificial effects.

way

in

posturing."

Thus, the procedure can

"

sion that meter

is stiff

easily lead to the

impres-

and wooden.

Pound seems to have been led to this impression. His remark, “(C|ompose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome" and his related imperative, “Don’t chop your

iambs" {LE,

stuff into separate

remind the poet rhythmical

life.

that

it

are valuable in that they

3, 6)

incumbent upon him

is

to give his verse

At the same time, the remark misconstrues tradi-

tional metrical practice, as does his characterization, in "Treatise

on Metre" turn

ti

in the

turn

ti

ABC of Reading,

turn

ti

turn

tences

When,

.

.

.

“ti

from which every departure

is

Good poets do not write in a foot by metronomic manner. They compose in phrases and sen-

treated as an exception." foot or

turn

ti

iambic pentameter as

of the

which

or can be adjusted to

fit

a

life

was

So mix’d

And

in

say to

gentle,

him all

and the elements

that

Nature might stand up

the world, “This

was

a

(Julius Caesar, 5 5.73 — 75 ) .

60

meter or

example, Shakespeare wrote,

for

His

fit

'

man!

”

a portion of

it.

1

POETRY AND PRECEDENT it

unlikely that he did so in a “His

is

and

.

.

.

the

el

life

.

.

.

was gen ...

... e ments” fashion. At points a poet

tie

may analyze

the particular feet of a particular passage with a view to modulat-

ing or perfecting a cadence, but this

is

quite a different thing from

counting, syllable by syllable, through a poem.

Furthermore, given the

any complete articulation

fact that

in

English has one and only one primarily stressed syllable and a

number it

of syllables receiving varying degrees of secondary stress,

would be rather

that

is,

of light

difficult to write a

and heavy

syllables

“metronomic”

line, a line,

of perfectly equivalent alter-

nating weight. Pound’s ti-tumming accounts for the metrical

norm

of the

pentameter

and

line

or read the line to bring out

tumming

way

for the

its

a student

might scan

metrical identity. But the

ti-

does not account for the necessary and happily infinite

varieties of rhythmical

contour (and they are not “exceptions”)

norm

that can exist within the

Here, for example,

is

of the conventional pentameter.

one pentameter

each from poems of Ben

line

Jonson, Rochester, Jane Austen, E. A. Robinson, Robert Frost,

and

Thom Gunn, pentameters which are metrically

the same, but

which nevertheless embody different individual rhythms:

my

Farewell, thou child of

right hand,

and

joy

French truth, Dutch prowess, British policy

The day commemorative of my If ever

Snow

I

am

and

old,

falling

alone

all

and night

birth

falling fast, oh, fast

Resisting, by embracing, nothingness

2*

In his Poetics, Julius Caesar Scaliger observes that

rhythm are concurrent, not sure of the verse

is

phenomena: “The mearhythm variable. ... It will be

antithetical,

invariable,

its

Rhythm on the temperament’’ mensura versus non mu-

therefore the Measure that determines

other hand determines tata, tus.

its

Rhythmus mutabitur

.

meter and

its

extent.

(

.

.

.

Erit igitur

Mensura praescriptio

Rhythmus autem praescnptionis temperamentum):'

Greek one of the meanings of rhythmos

is

trac-

In ancient

“disposition” or “tem-

6

MISSING MEASURES perament.” Jonson, Rochester, Austen, Robinson, Frost, and

Gunn

demonstrate

all

English practice what seems

in particular

to hold true in different

ways

for different metrical systems in the

Indo-European languages: conventional dates personally distinctive

rhythm within the norm

The method of reading and scanning however, obscures

refers,

ningham

is

hostility to the

mately that

in

method came

will be

it.

(This

examined

is

meter

to be directed at

versification involves departure

tion within

which Cunningham

to

hostility led to the idea that the

which

measure.

Cun-

observing that the understandable

give rhythmical distinction to his verse the idea,

of

English meter, and

this quality in

no doubt correct

accommo-

versification

from

way

Ulti-

a poet

to violate meter.

is

in the

only

itself.

It

can

led to

next chapter, that skillful

norm

a

rather than varia-

not to suggest that one cannot

draw

dis-

criminations between a very “free” free verse, such as one finds in

much of

of the Cantos,

which

Eliot

s

and some

sort of

more

“Gerontion” may serve

tion” hovers loosely but frequently

as

restricted procedure,

an example. “Geron-

around iambic pentameter.

more restricted procedures are related, and both norm itself in the same manner if not to the same

Yet the freer and

undermine the degree.) It

might

also be observed that the

ti-tumming method

of read-

ing continues to inform attitudes towards metrical composition.

At times, readers reading

it

who

recognize that a

silently or aloud,

pattern across the lines, even

poem

is

metrical will, in

impose the light-heavy, light-heavy

when

their syntax

and rhythm vary

considerably from the pattern. For such readers, the alertly fluid

“With how sad steps,” will most thumping specimens of

verses of, for example, Philip Sidney’s

sound

as crudely

mechanical as the

George Gascoigne’s work.

The

popularity of musical scanning

the nineteenth century

views

nomic

ol

two decades

of

also have affected the modernists’

meter. Pound’s belief that conventional verse

recalls

()2

may

in the final

Sidney Lanier’s argument,

in his Science

is

metro-

of English

POETRY AND PRECEDENT Verse of 1880, that pentameters are written in 3/8 time

—

metri-

unaccented syllables having the time value of eighth notes, metrically accented syllables having the time value of quarter

cally

According

notes.

to this theory,

when

the ear hears pentameter

it

hears tick -tac\, tick -tac{, tick -tack,, tick -tac\, tick -tac^V'

There

is

another matter related to scansion that affected the

development undertaken

This concerns the exhaustive analyses,

of free verse.

nineteenth and early twentieth century by

in the late

scholars like jakob Schipper

and Saintsbury, of

These analyses appear

possible in English verse.

feet

to

and meters

have led some

poets to regard scansion as generative rather than descriptive.

That

some of

is,

the modernists were led into the misapprehen-

sion that any piece of writing

which can be broken down

of one kind or another, and that can be marked out short or accented

and unaccented

poetic legitimacy. This

be scanned.

One

is

a

syllables,

misapprehension because anything can

can break a grocery

make

the

long and

can claim traditional

newspaper column, or

a

list,

a television script into iambs, trochees, anapests,

This does not

in

into feet

list

or

column

and other

feet.

or script metrical, for

metrical composition entails the use of feet in repeated and recog-

nizable linear or strophic units. It is

on the mistaken

belief that scanning

metrical that Eliot bases

Discussing vers

libre

many

something makes

it

of his “Reflections on Vers Libre.

and contending

that

no verse

is

"

really free,

he says: If vers libre

And

I

is

a

genuine verse-form

can define

absence of rhyme,

The

it

(3)

will

only in negatives:

is

(1)

absence of pattern,

easily disposed of.

would he which would not scan

the popular

have a positive definition. (2)

absence of metre.

third of these quantities

line that

it

at all

American magazines, whose

I

What

cannot

verse

sort of a

say.

Even

in

columns are now

largely given over to vers libre, the lines are usually explicable in

terms of prosody.

Any

line

can be divided into

feet

and

accents.

(TCC, 184-85)

63

MISSING MEASURES

Near the end

of the essay Eliot says of vers libre “that

not

is

it

defined by non-existence of metre, since even the worst verse can be scanned” (TCC, 189). Eliot has equated sis,

any utterance

meter with scansion. According to

metrical.

is

Pound,

in his

his analy-

review of Prufrocf{ and

Other Observations, offers by implication the same equation of

meter with scansion and the same all-encompassing definition ol metricality. After

quoting

man who wants

to

do

a

Eliot’s

remark,

good

job,”

virtually impossible for a poet to

“No

vers

is

libre for the

Pound suggests that compose non-metrically:

is

it

Alexandrine and other grammarians have made cubby-holes tor various groupings of syllables; they have put

names upon them, and

have given various labels to ‘metres' consisting of combinations of these different groups.

Thus

it

would be hard

to escape contact

with

some group or other; only an encyclopedist could ever be half sure he had done so. The known categories would allow a fair liberty to the most conscientious

traditionalist.

The most

fanatical vers-librist will

escape them with difficulty. (

One sympathizes antry.

LE

,

421)

with Pound’s impatience with prosodic ped-

His remarks, however, are misguided.

He might

just as

well say that even the most fanatical stream-of-consciousness

prose writer or the most incoherent street-corner orator could not

he sure that he was not composing metrically.

Pound and with free verse

Eliot’s

appeal to scansion to justify experiments

may seem

to contradict their hostility to the

tumming exercises of reading and scanning. To be contradiction. The ti-tumming theory holds that position

is

metrical

is

a

com-

inevitably rigid, while the unavoidable-feet theory

holds that anything co-exist in

sure, there

ti-

in syllables

Pound and

is

Eliot (and

metrical. Yet these

two theories

much subsequent

prosodic dis-

cussion) because together they constitute a highly efficacious

defense of experimental poetry: while the ti-tumming theory

64

POETRY AND PRECEDENT discredits conventional meter, the unavoidable-feet theory legiti-

mizes free verse

being metrical.

as

This legitimization of free verse was important for the mod-

Many poets writing free verse had medium. Any indication that they were

ernists.

prosody (even as they were

welcome.

It

at the

misgivings about the following traditional

same time breaking with

helped to give them the hope that, lurking

it)

was

in their

experiments, were forms capable of being developed and passed

on

to later writers,

forms that would become clearer and clearer

the experiments continued and that as

organized and explicable

a

would eventually

as

constitute

prosodic system as the traditional

accentual-syllabic system of English prosody.

That the leaders meter

is

troubling.

world

in

which the

modern revolution so misunderstood At the same time, one must remember the modernists grew up. It was a world in which of the

Swinburne was the the

was a

mode most a

the verse.

when

It

It

and

in

which Swinburneanism was

obviously available to the young poet. Swinburne

dead end.

dead end?

chief poet

And why was

he,

and Victorian verse

in general,

was because of the numbingly emphatic quality

was because the metrical

effects of the verse,

of

even

they were striking and admirable (as they often were in

Swinburne), insisted on themselves sence of serious and

vital subject

as metrical effects in the ab-

matter.

It

was because the verse

almost seemed to preclude mature and flexible expression. Metrical speech, as

was noted

earlier,

by nature produces degrees of

emphasis. Moreover, as has already been observed, meter can

support elevated diction more readily than prose can, and thus encourage the

unwary

or unskillful writer to

or indiscriminately elevated diction. ral for

Ford, Eliot, and Pound, living

moment in

may have been

wrought and

it

may

falsely

only natu-

at the particular historical

they did, to consider removing meter from

hopes of removing from

One

It

employ

it

poetry

everything which seemed over-

dull.

should also note that the modern revolutionaries were

65

MISSING MEASURES uneasy about their attack on meter and that creased after the triumph of the revolution.

uneasiness in-

this

The modern move-

ment’s leaders were, as the years passed, concerned that their revolution was not followed hy a period of consolidation, hut hy increasingly casual and incoherent experiments with poetic form.

As

early as his 1918 “Retrospect,”

“/P/m

libre

become

has

flaccid varieties that

preceded

any advantage rhythms than some

I

and

...

it.

“Music

any of the to

imperceptible

12-13).

3,

Pound

expressed hy

In his 1942

as verbose as

do not think one can use

I

and William Carlos Williams

letters.

cautions his followers,

much more tenuous and

have used” {LE,

The sentiment Eliot

as prolix

Pound

is

expressed repeatedly hy

in their later criticism

and

of Poetry” essay, Eliot surveys the

contemporary scene and writes that “the craving novelty of diction and metric

is

as

unwholesome

for continual

as

an obstinate

idiom of our grandfathers.” In 1944, in his lecture on Dr. Johnson, he speaks of the “riot of individual styles”

adherence

in

modern

to the

only, or the at all;

most prized virtue

and when several

admirers, cease to have in

any identity of

Milton lecture:

poets,

and

common

their respective

groups

of

any standards of versification,

of preference.” In

“We

rest of life, live in

of the

of poetry,

taste or of tenets of belief, criticism

an advertisement

audience

when it becomes the may cease to he a virtue

poetry and adds that “originality,

decline to

remarks

in his

more than

in the

1947, Eliot

cannot, in literature, any

may

perpetual state of revolution,” and he warns his

danger

of “a progressive deterioration,

and

that

is

our danger today” (OPP, 35, 182, 160). It is interesting to note that Eliot lived to see a world in which creative writing and creative free versing

became

a

common

feature of academic

life,

and

his

response to this world was evidently one of dismay. In 1950, he

Adam Smith: “I was shocked when my me with some verses that she had written

says in a letter to Janet

grand-niece presented

as school exercises to find that little girls in

were encouraged

66

to write in vers libre.”

1

an American school

POETRY AND PRECEDENT

One

finds similar statements in the essays

Williams wrote from the early terizes “the present

moment"

letters that

1952, he charac-

as “a formless interim”

what uneasily observes, “There

among

thirties on. In

and

is

and some-

no workable poetic form extant

us today." In 1935, he writes to the editor Ronald

Lane

Latimer, asking him to try to discover an alternate metric

in his

(Williams’)

own work,

which Williams himself feels what then do want you to do?

a discovery

incapable of making: “All right,

want you

discover not necessarily

to

what the new measures are

do,

with his son

wanted

Bill,

to link

ing

myself up with

in the true

still

much

doubt that

my

1948, in his

“Poem

And

as a Field

in 1953,

mine may

corresponding

own poems:

be, but

I

have

“I I

was

along with that, developart.

I

wonder how

haven’t been recognized and is

good or even adequate.”

among

Of

now twenty

he writes in his is

this situation,

much

the rest have

“Without measure we are count.

.

who

.

is

.

There are

a

In

of Action" essay, he complains of

years old, disfigures every

“On Measure

nothing interesting

— Statement

in the construc-

of our poems, nothing that can jog the ear out of

boredom.”

I

contemporary writing, “|T]he tiresome

Cid Gorman": “There

tion

to be." In 1942,

technical influence

repetition of this ‘new,’

us

might

it

verse, but

evolving tradition of the

dull experimentally in

journal."

my

I

a traditional art, to feel that

have succeeded there.

I

in

he gloomily says of his

developing individually

for

I

he sadly and honestly remarks: to

lost.

its

“I

answer for"; and he continues,

But we have

lost

even the

few exceptions but there

consciously aware of what he

is

is

ability to

no one among

doing” (SL,

129, 132,

202; SE, 280, 338, 339, 340).

These considerations should probably make one skeptical of Eliot’s

contention that metrical considerations are negligible

when compared with

the broader question of

good writing and

As true as it is that meter alone will never produce a fine poem, even a poor poet who writes in meter keeps alive the traditions of versification. When good and bad writers alike debad.

67

MISSING MEASURES vote themselves to tree verse,

form

— and

of the

of his

possible that

memorability and delight

surprises can give to readers

Writing

it is

coming

—

all

its

sense of poetic

symmetries and

will be lost.

of age in the early years of the twentieth

century, Wallace Stevens in his “Noble Rider and the

Words”

says that there

was

Sound

a sense “that the Victorians

nothing behind.”' Conventional poetry,

was exhausted. Yet the Victorian era had

it

had

of

left

was widely believed,

left

behind something,

something even the leaders of the modern movement admired

and wished

to

emulate. This was prose

chapter will examine

velopment of free

68

how modern

verse.

fiction.

And

the next

prose fiction affected the de-

,

CHAPTER

2

“The Superior Art”: Verse

and Prose

and Modem

In the last

Poetry

and longest section of his

the subject of prose rhythm. to

While speaking of the

attempt rhythmical arrangement

lowing remarks about

Orator, Cicero takes

Isocrates,

in prose,

up

earliest writers

he makes the

remarks which

I

fol-

cited in the

introduction to this study but which bear repeating here:

The

enthusiastic admirers of Isocrates extol as the greatest of his

accomplishments that he was the

first

to introduce

rhythm

into prose.

For when he observed that people listened

to orators

attention, hut to poets with pleasure, he

said to have sought for

rhythms

to use in prose as well,

is

with solemn

both for their intrinsic charm and

order that monotony might be forestalled by variety. (

Orator 174 )

69

in

MISSING MEASURKS These observations remind us that ancient prose developing their fifth

emulated the older

art,

writers, in

Prom

art of poetry.

the

century b.c. on, orators and rhetoricians were centrally con-

cerned with establishing quasi-metrical procedures tor prose that

would give

a structural integrity

it

of verse. Gorgias,

to that

teacher,

is

who

and attractiveness comparable

reputed to have been Isocrates’

is

generally considered to be the figure

who

initiated the

development of rhythmical prose; Cicero himself, shortly

af-

making the comments cited above, argues that both Gorgias and Thrasymachus preceded Isocrates in the innovations with ter

which the younger man was sometimes credited. Diodorus

makes

Siculus

1

clear

that

2.53.2-5)

(i

famous embassy and public address

when Gorgias made

to the

he had already developed a prose style

Athenians

his

in

427 b.c., that incorporated devices

suggestive of poetry. “|B|y the novelty of his speech,” Diodorus tells us,

“he

filled

the Athenians,

who

fond of dialectic, with wonder. For he was the rather unusual

and carefully devised structures

first

of speech,

clauses \parison or similar endings \homoioteleuton \

of which

the device Style,

exotic.” In a similar vein,

loose, disjointed style

followers fashioned a

penodos)

in

\

(

lexis

less

and the

like,

more

employed

a

eiromeme), whereas Gorgias and his tightly organized, periodic style

which, Demetrius

another with no

,

Demetrius observes (On

that before Gorgias, prose writers

12-15)

such as

time was enthusiastically received because

at that

was

to use the

with equal members \isocdlon\ or balanced

antithesis, sentences

all

and

are by nature clever

says, “the

(

lexis

periods succeed one

regularity than the hexameters in the poetry

of Homer.”

To

be sure, ancient writers never insisted that prose actually be

composed

in

meter, that

units of verse. Yet

prose

rhythm

all

as a

is,

in the regularly

major writers on oratory and rhetoric principal aspect of their subject.

Cicero’s observations indicate,

rangement was

70

measured rhythmical

a chief

it

was agreed

means by which

treat

And,

as

that rhythmical ar-

poets enchanted their

,

“the superior art” listeners

would

and

something of the same kind

that

organization

of

similarly benefit prose writers.

Quite

a different

phenomenon

characterizes recent literary

Rather than prose emulating the metrical order of poetry, poetry emulates the rhythmical freedom of prose. Whereas in history.

earlier periods prose writers

experimented with cadential patterns and other elements associated with verse, many modern poets forgo conventional metric in favor of free verse and replace

meter with looser rhythms traditionally associated with prose. One reason for this development concerns the modern novel of manners. Prior to the nineteenth century, most imaginative literature of prestige

is

metrical.

Its

Homer, Sappho, Sophocles,

authors are writers of verse, such as

Horace, Dante, Petrarch,

Virgil,

Ariosto, Shakespeare, Jonson, Racine, Pope. But in the late eigh-

teenth and nineteenth century, prose fiction challenges and, to a great extent, triumphs over fiction in verse. In consequence, the

modern reformers

pursue their reforms with reference

of poetry

not only to the deficiencies of Victorian verse, but also to the successes of the period’s novels. as

Ford

says, “verse

to be poetry”

(

must be

TTR

When

at least as well

must be

as

central place in in the

written as prose

engaging

modern

as

They

much

fiction, if

Given the

it

was noted

is

to hold a

reform a poetic idiom that had

lost

modern movement, however,

is

perfectly

in the last chapter, the

resembles objectives that earlier poets pursued

when

aim

they set out

touch with living speech. In

prosaic qualities

become de-

siderata not only for poetic diction, but for poetic structure

And

a

novel’s ascendency

Victorian verse, this aim

reasonable. Furthermore, as

the

it is

Victorian period, and given the inflated diction and limited

subject matter of

to

if

are arguing as well that

good prose

literature.

that,

more than

201), their assertion entails

frustration with lax poetic style.

verse

Ford and Pound urge

the idea that verse should be as well written as prose

itself.

is

con-

verted into the very different idea that poetry might be written as the novel

is

written: without meter.

71

MISSING MEASURES This chapter which,

will address three related topics: first, the

in antiquity, prose writers

ways

in

sought to model prose on the

structural order ot poetry; second, the response of poets, in the

modern

and

to their realization that

lost its traditional position as

the primary vehicle for

period, to the novel

poetry had

fiction; third, the

ways

in

s

success

which modern

poets, developing a

compete with prose

“free” verse designed to

fiction,

employed

concepts which ancient writers had employed in developing an prose designed to compete with poetry.

artistic

Prose Seeding Order

i.

on the Model of Poetry

Ancient prose rhythm has been studied extensively.'

would be superfluous and impractical matter here.

It

to

attempt a survey of the

ing ancient prose rhythm that indicate the

These

appropriate to prose, the

way

manner and degree

to

to poetry for structural order.

amount and nature of rhythm believed units of rhythm that were felt suitable to

issues involve the

prose and the

concern-

will be sufficient to consider those issues

which ancient prose writers looked

It

these were used by prose writers,

difficulty that ancient critics

sometimes had

in

and the

maintaining work-

ing distinctions between verse and prose.

Regarding the amount critics

of

rhythm appropriate

to prose, ancient

affirm that prose should possess perceptible rhythmical

structure, but should not

the third

book

embrace the norm

of a metrical line. In

of the Rhetoric, Aristotle addresses this issue in his

seminal discussion of prose rhythm:

The form (

of diction (sterna tes lexeds) should be neither metrical

emmetron ) nor without rhythm ( arrhythmon ). ...

rhythm,

it

is

unlimited, whereas

metre); for that which

Now

all

72

is

it

unlimited

things are limited by

ought is

to

It

it

is

without

be limited (but not by

unpleasant and unknowable.

number

(arithmo),

and the number

)

“the superior art” belonging to the form of diction

rhythm ( rhythmos ), of which the Wherefore prose {logon) must he rhyth-

metres ( metra are divisions. mical, but not metrical

hexameter], otherwise

in a specific

|i.e., it

is

poem

will be a

rhythm he rigorously carried

metre such as trimeter or

Nor must

{poiema).

up

out, hut only

to a certain point. (3-8.1

Writing on

remarking

servation,

sages

owes

members metrical

seem

a similar ob-

(183) of Plato’s prose: “Plato in

many

to

(

(

.

.

ametrois ).” So, too, Cicero

should be bound or

numens ), but

should not contain

actual verses {versibus).

without being

.

clear, then, that prose

is

rhythm

restricted by

pas-

rhythm {rhythmo). His glide along and to be neither altogether

cmmetrois ) nor unmetrical

says {Orator, 187), “It

A

makes

-3)

his elegance directly to the

{cola) (

elegance, Demetrius

stylistic

this

that

it

In short, prose should hint at metricality

in meter.

corollary of this idea

is

that prose calls for qualities of move-

ment which, though suggesting the order of metrical composition, are more variable or diffuse than the specific units of verse. Contrasting the comparative freedom of prose with the restrictions of verse, Dionysius of Helicarnassus says position,

19):

must

lines

“[EJpic writers cannot vary their metre, for

all

the

necessarily be hexameters; nor yet the rhythm, for they

must use those

The

of these.

{On Literary Com-

feet that

begin with

a

long syllable, and not

all

even

writers of lyric verse cannot vary the melodies of

strophe and antistrophe, but whether they adopt enharmonic

melodies, or chromatic, or diatonic,

in all the

strophes and anti-

same sequences must be observed. writing, however,] has full liberty and permission M composition by whatever changes it strophes

the

|

.

.

.

Prose-

to diversify

pleases.’

Similarly, in his dialogue,

mark

(3.184) that,

mical effects, he

is

Oratore, Cicero has Crassus re-

though the prose writer must attend

to rhyth-

not so confined in this respect as the poet:

These points however do not is

De

call for

practiced by the poets; for

them

such close attention and care as it

is

a

requirement of actual

73

,

MISSING MEASURES

necessity

and

framed

so

of the metrical

forms themselves that the words

in the line that there

may

est oratio ),

and

designation as ‘free

its

mean

one, only this does not

about, but that

Quintilian

it is

sums up

and the meter

style’ is

it

For

go loose or

to

roam

1

own

its

Libenor

quite a correct

control.

rhythm

of prose

is

metns finita

libera spatia,

Quintilian observes elsewhere

(9.4.1

15-

16)

concerned with “the general rhythmical

period” rather than with the specific unit of a verse

line.

And

will

hold the same place (

is

(

when he remarks (9.4.50) “that rhythm over which it may range, whereas the spaces

that the prose writer

poetry”

free to

the difference between the

this reason,

effect of the

less fettered

soluta )

not in chains and supplies

metre are confined” ( quod rhythmis

sunt).

(

is

a

of poetry

has unlimited space of

that

more by even

not be less or

single breath than the length required. Prose

shall be

Quintilian concludes: “Therefore rhythmical structure

Ergo quern

in

in

prose that

is

held by versification in

poemate locum habet

versificatio

eum

,

in

oratione compositio).

There

is

a practical reason

behind the ancients’

should suggest metricality without being or orator desires to appeal movingly ence. Rhythmical

meter.

arrangement enables him

readily recognizable

A

prose writer

and memorably

does not want his art to he too obvious.

his

in

belief that prose

and predictable,

his

to

do

If his

to his audi-

But he also

this.

rhythms are too

audience

may

consider

composition excessively contrived. Conspicuous refinements

of style could prove especially deleterious

where they might well indicate an absence

in

forensic oratory,

of conviction

on the

part of the pleader.

Speaking prose, “If artificial,

since

it

of this matter, Aristotle

it

and

sets

is

at

metrical,

the

him on

it

remarks Rhetoric (

lacks persuasiveness, for

same time

it

it

3.8.1)

of

appears

distracts the hearer’s attention,

the watch for the recurrence of such

and such

a

cadence.” Quintilian likewise contends that, though the prose writer should attend to rhythmical arrangement, he too regular a rhythm:

74

must avoid

“the superior art” For we

shall really be

candt genus) further, to affectation. is

we

it

do .

so .

would ]

in a species

down one law

seek to lay

|1

.

indulging

lay us

open

-

tor all varieties of speech:

charge of the most obvious he sweeter the rhythm, the sooner the orator who

carry conviction or to

anger,

( versifi

to the

detected in a studied adherence to

refuse to believe

of versification

stir

him or

employment,

its

the passions and emotions.

to allow

him

to excite his

will cease to

The judge

will

compassion or

his

he thinks that he has leisure for this species of refinement. It will therefore be desirable from time to time that in certain passages if

rhythm should be

the

deliberately dissolved. (9.4.143-44)

To speak

we

briefly of issues

will be

examining

in the third

section of this chapter, the ancient notion of prose approximating

but not being meter

much

is

like

especially those advocated by Eliot.

modern notions of

free verse,

Furthermore, ancient discus-

sions of the dangers of seeming overly artificial in prose have their

counterparts

in the

modern

modern

period. In the

period,

how-

ever, the dangers are discussed with reference not to the prose

who

writer but to the poet,

order to avoid appearing

prose

to

its

Ancient

to metrical feet

some ancient

for prose,

commonly

inversion,

in the

critics

and

-)

is

because

was not notably employed

arrangement

was used

urge that the paeon

critics

First Paeon, first

-

—

,

or

consciously

in lyric verse.

mentioned

a

in

any of the poetic metra,

as a resolved

form of the

This quality’s importance

moment

ago: though

it

was

also felt that prose verging too closely

cretic

is

related

felt

that an

absence of rhythm would offend the ear of the reader or

was

be

prose by Thrasymachus, the paeon was favored

though the paeon, particularly to the issue

prose

feet believed to

especially fitting. Evidently

in

analyze

to their

form of the so-called

employed it

by applying metrical termi-

and periods. Regarding the metrical

most suitable (most

to poetry

composition.

rhythm with reference in clauses

often counseled to avoid meter in

artificial.

Ancient prose also looks nology

is

listener,

it

on standard metrical

75

,

MISSING MEASURES

would sound

lines

A prose writer or orator whose rhythms

stilted.

were largely constructed out

would run the

of dactyls

and spondees,

sounding hexametric, since those

risk of

especially associated with the hexameter; by the of trochees

tor instance,

same token, runs

and iambs might suggest the tetrameter and trimeter

respectively.

The

tions with the

paeon, however, did not have such close associa-

common

meters. Aristotle,

who

spells the

contrast with later custom, with an alpha instead of an

way

the fourth letter, puts the matter this

paean should be retained the

|

for prose],

rhythms mentioned which

so that

it is

feet are

most

is

(

word,

in

omega

as

Rhetoric 3.8.5): “|T]he ,

because

it is

the only one of

not adapted to a metrical system,

likely to be undetected.”

There are two points

to

make

here. First,

though some ancient

writers believed that paeons were signally suited to prose, other

writers it is

all

sorts of feet

occur naturally

speech,

Cicero respectfully discusses ( Orator 192-96) Aristotle’s

endorsement however,

is

that .

.

all .

kinds of

feet are

Prose, then, as

tempered by an admixture

of

I

mingled and jumbled

rhythm;

it

tree

paean |Cicero’s follows Aristotle’s spelling] measure, because that

feel-

have said before, should be

nor wholly rhythmical (nee dissoluta

Aristotle], but

“My own

paeon but adds nevertheless:

of the

together in prose.

|

in

misleading to suggest that only certain of them are adaptable

to prose.

ing,

because

felt that,

should not be loose, tota is

numerosa ); the

to be the principal

the opinion of our greatest authority

is

we should combine

which he disregards.” Quintilian

is

this

with the other rhythms

even more skeptical of the

notion that the paeon or any other foot can claim overriding efficacy for prose,

remarking (9.4.87-91

)

that he

is

“surprised that

scholars of the highest learning should have held the view that

some

feet

should be specially selected and others condemned for

the purposes of prose, as

if

there were any foot which

inevitably be found in prose.” Quintilian goes

on

however dogmatically

feet

in

oratory, “for

them against

76

all

critics assert that

some

must not

to observe that

do not belong

they say, these feet will force themselves

their will.

.

.

.

upon

Feet therefore should be mixed, while

,

“the superior art” care

must be taken

that the majority are of a pleasing character,

and that the inferior

feet are lost in the

surrounding crowd of

their superior kindred.”

A

second point to note with regard to the paeon is that even critics who favored it never suggested that paeonic rhythm should he employed with absolute regularity.

To do

so

would be

to vio-

nature of prose and to convert prose into a species of metcomposition. Rather, critics like Aristotle Rhetoric 3. 8.6-8)

late the rical

(

and Demetrius (38—41) urge that it will be enough for the writer simply to use paeonic rhythm at certain key points. In particular, it seems to have been thought that an author might merely begin clauses

and periods with

Paeon and conclude with an inverted or Fourth Paeon, without worrying too much about what happens in the middle sections the theory being that a First

—

opening clauses or periods with a long syllable would give them impetus at the outset and that ending them with a long syllable

would provide them with This procedure the paeon. starts his

He

is

a felicitous sense of closure.

illustrated by

cites (39) the

Demetrius

in his discussion of

observation with which Thucydides

account of the plague and argues that the impressive

and quiet firmness of the observation results from Thucydides’ beginning with a First Paeon and ending with its inverted version: erxato de to kakon ex Aithiopias.

(Now There

is

it

was from Aethiopia

that the

an additional point to

rhythm.

One need

formula

just

not,

malady

make with

originally came.)

respect to paeonic

Demetrius continues, employ exactly the

given to achieve a forcefulness comparable to that

of Thucydides’ statement about the plague’s origin. Indeed,

one always employed

this construction, one’s

if

audience would

probably become distracted by the recurrence of the pattern, and the construction

would conduce

appearance of affectation.

It

less to

may

impressiveness than to an

therefore be advisable, De-

metrius observes, simply to modulate the beginnings and con-

77

\

MISSING MEASURES

elusions

— and,

it

one wishes, the interiors

—

of clauses in a

paeonic manner without really resorting to paeons. This latter

technique

well exemplified, to Demetrius' mind, by a clause

is

Theophrastus once cited

—

—

ton

men

peri ta

(Those

who

for

— ww —

The rhythm

medenos

elevation:

its stylistic

—

—

ww

axia philosophounton.

philosophize in matters that are worth nought.)

of this clause

is

not strictly paeonic.

anything. Nevertheless, the clause

with long syllables, and

in

two

is

initiated

It is

not strictly

and terminated

places within the line three short

syllables either precede or follow a long syllable.

The paeon was cial

attention

not the only rhythmical unit which

from ancient prose

writers.

drew

spe-

Greek and Latin orators

developed additional rhythmical units to highlight the endings of clauses or periods. These cadential units, called clausulae, consisted of different combinations of feet. For instance, three

favored

clausulae

(— ^ ^

—w

— w—

),

by

Latin

marked

were the

the double cretic (— ^ In Cicero’s

).

draw breath

De

),

and the

cretic

spondee

cretic

dichoree

Oratore, Crassus discusses (3.173)

them

clausulae, characterizing

the need to

writers

as “pauses

(

clausulae ) dictated by

rather than by complete exhaustion,

not by scribes' punctuation but by the pattern of

and content.”'

and

words

1

Concerning the use of one encounters

sounds

clausulae, Crassus

in discussions of

a

theme

that

other elements of prose rhythm.

Clausulae should be employed, he says, regularly enough to secure

rhythmical order for speech, but not so regularly as to suggest verse:

The key

point here

appearance

that

is

it

the sequence of

of verse in prose, there

is

something wrong:

same time we want

the sequence of

a verse does, tidily

and completely. There

many,

that

more

clearly

ignorant and unskilled

7»

in

marks

words causes the

words

to

yet at the

end rhythmically,

is

just as

no one thing, out of so

off the orator

from the

man who

is

speaking than that the untutored pour out

‘the superior art they can shapelessly, letting breath, not technique, dictate the pauses in what they say: while the orator so binds his thought in

all

words

that he

imposes on

Having bound

it

rhythm

a

at

once disciplined and

free.

with balance and rhythm, he relaxes and frees it by changes ot order, ensuring that the words are neither subjected like

some

verse to

it

particular rule nor so free as to

wander

at large.

(3.175-76)

To

the

modern

student, writing prose with so conscious an eye

on rhythmical arrangement may seem peculiar, and he may ask

to

what extent ancient writers put the ideas we have been examining into practice. The answer is, fairly extensively. The practice of prose rhythm was, in its particulars, never uniform. There was, however, an almost universal agreement about

What 3.8.1 3*

i

;

95

is

more, the available evidence

Dionysius,

On

Aristotle, Rhetoric,

(e.g.,

Literary Composition,

1

1

importance.

its

;

Cicero,

De

Oratore,

_ 96) indicates that even uneducated audiences could appre-

ciate skillful

rhythm

in

an oration and could, by the same token,

be irritated and put off by inept rhythm.

Other indications lates the metrical

of the degree to

7

which ancient prose emu-

order ot poetry are exercises

in

comparative

metrical analysis, such as one finds in the eighteenth chapter of

Dionysius’

On

Literary Composition. In endeavoring to

demon-

and unsuccessful management of rhythm and meter, Dionysius juxtaposes a passage from the Iliad with a passage from Hegesias History of Alexander. The passages deal with strate successful

similar episodes. In the passage

how

from the

Iliad,

Achilles, having killed Hector, ties the

drags

it

body

Homer

narrates

to a chariot

and

before the walls of Troy. In the passage from the History,

Hegesias

tells

offer of peace

how from

Alexander, having been betrayed by Batis, has Batis tied to a chariot

high speed over rough ground so that he

Both episodes are horrifying.

It

is

a false

and hauled

at

virtually flayed alive.

requires great tact, Dionysius

communicate such material in a way that does not sicken hut moves the heart. Homer, Dionysius urges, has this tact. His notes, to

narration of Achilles’ shameful treatment of Hector’s corpse

79

is

MISSING MEASURES

and

affecting,

Dionysius contends, largely

this quality derives,

from Homer’s straightforward language and the unaffected

skill

with which he manages the hexameter. Hegesias’ passage, contrast,

in

merely stomach-turning. According to Dionysius, the

is

grotesquerie of Hegesias’ account results precisely from his mis-

management

of

rhythm and from

the preciosity in his choice

and

disposition of feet.

To modern comparison will

readers raised on

will

seem

seem striking

in

New Critical analysis, Dionysius’

many ways

familiar.

one respect: Dionysius

in

two poems, but

metrical qualities not of

work. So closely does ancient prose look order

—

so directly does

associated with poetry

—

it

is

of a

poem and

prose

to poetry for structural

same

that Dionysius can apply the

Because ancient prose tried

tech-

art.

to

govern

governed, on some sort of rhythmical

itself,

was

it

maintain distinctions between the two

arts.

as poetry

was

and because prose

basis,

looked to metrics for structural order,

at

times difficult to

This

difficulty

is

evi-

labored efforts Cicero devotes in the Orator to distin-

in the

guishing rhythms of prose from those of verse. also reflected by Quintilian,

who expresses

(

difficulty

is

who

attempted

to

though

it

lyricorum carmina)." Quintilian

is

force prose into definite meters a species of lyric poetry

The

(9.4.53) exasperation at

having “come across tiresome grammarians

were

comparing the

seek the kinds of rhythmical effects

niques of prosodic analysis to each

dent

But the comparison

(

vurias mensuras), as

draw boundaries between prose rhythm and poetic versification, and he makes interesting remarks in reference to Cicero’s exertions on the same subject: himself at pains to

Cicero, indeed, frequently asserts that the whole art of prosestructure consists in critics

rhythm and

on the ground

rhythm.

.

.

.

Among

that he

is

consequently censured by some

would

tetter

our

style

by the laws of

others they attack Cicero’s statement that the

would not have such force but for the are whirled and sped upon their way. If by

thunderbolts of Demosthenes

rhythm with which they

rhythmis contorta he really

80

means what

his critics assert,

I

do not agree

“the superior art” with him. For rhythms have, as

on with the same

structure, hut run

end.

.

.

.

my own

For

rhythm

free,

1

refer to the

I

no hxed

and

rise

ask

of artistic structure (as

understand that

said,

and prose

verse

Quintdian

is

my

reader,

rhythm

differ has

if

Quintilian

whenever

thereby threatened

ing treated as

if

being treated as

As we

if

it it

is

He

prose.

were were

I

speak of

of oratory, not of verse.

9 4 53 -

-

-

57 )

always been a vexed question;

is

is

important

It is

to

some critics whose identity

distressed that

confuse prose and verse, he believes that the art is

calumny, from

have done on every occasion), to

I

dealing with a perennial problem.

note, however, that

they reach their

fall till

(

How

limit or variety of

part, to avoid incurring the

which even Cicero was not the

have

I

not afraid that verse

is

be-

a species of prose, but that prose

is

a species of verse.

will see later in this chapter, this situation

is

exactly

modern period. Prose is not drawn towards metric verse is drawn away from metric and toward prose.

reversed in the

and

verse;

Distinguishing between prose and verse remains as perplexing an issue as ever;

it

is,

however, not prose but verse whose nature

unclear and whose independence from

Whereas

to

sister art

is

precarious.

expressed concern about the ten-

in antiquity writers

dency of prose

its

is

abandon rhythm

in

its

general sense for the

particular structure of meter, our time has witnessed the tendency of verse to

abandon meter

quality of rhythm. Indeed, the prosodic history of

in favor it is

of a more general and vaguer

scarcely an exaggeration to say that

modern

verse consists of the displacement

of metron by rhythmos.

2.

The

Shift from Fiction in

Meter

to Fiction in Prose

Cultivation of prose rhythm persists into and through the

Middle Ages."

In Latin, partly because of the influence of speech

81

MISSING MEASURES qualities of the developing

European vernaculars, the

classical

quantatitive rhythms are gradually overlaid by accentual ones.

(Much

same phenomenon characterizes Greek; from the hrst century a.d. onward, Greek quantitative metric weakens, eventhe

on accent.) This

tually to he supplanted by versification based

development, however, does not signal the end tices,

hut rather their adaptation to

new

ol earlier prac-

linguistic

environments.

For instance, the ancient clausulae are transformed by degrees

in

Latin prose into the medieval schemes of cursus. In other words, as writers neglect or lose sensitivity to the durational values of

and

syllables in Latin, ter,

as Latin itself

assumes an accentual charac-

the quantitative clausulae are transferred into an accentual

context. cretic

To

take as examples the three clausulae cited earlier, the

spondee becomes the planus

(

—

——

),

the double cretic

/

becomes the tardus (—

),

becomes the

w).

velox

The continued proximity in the

the cretic dichoree

of prose to poetic practice

can he seen

various meanings that attach themselves to prosa, which

is

a

medieval contraction for prorsus oratio (straightforward speech)

and from which we derive our word “prose.” During the Middle Ages, prosa indicates that kind of carefully composed non-poetic discourse indicated in classical Latin by numerosa oratio or compositio oratio (rhythmical

and/or

sense,

ornament and often has construable

definite

stylistic

rhythm. Furthermore, prosa

Ages

poem

to describe a

measure

as

opposed

nifies as well the

is

artistic speech).

employed

in the earlier

Middle

written in Latin according to accentual

to classical quantitative

measure. Prosa

sig-

couplet compositions written as texts for the

musical sequences of the medieval church. initially

Prosa has, in this

Though

these

were

written solely with reference to the musical texts, subse-

quently prosae were produced in conformity with scansion and structural rhyme.

Other evidence etry includes the

82

of

the proximity of medieval prose to po-

medieval interest

in prosimetra,

compositions

in

“the superior art" which verse

interspersed with prose. This

form precedes the Middle Ages. It appears to have originated with Menippus (H. 3rd c. b.c.), whose now-lost satires were imitated in Varro’s Saturae Metiippeae, of which only fragments are extant. The Apocolocyntosis

is

traditionally attributed to Seneca

Petronius' Satyricon

was

also he cited as

Middle Ages, however,

in the

examples of the form.

It

was espe-

that the prosimetrum

thanks partly to the influence of Martianus Ca-

cially favored, pella’s

may

and the surviving section of

Marriage of Mercury and Philology (early 5th

and

c.)

Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (524); both prosimetra achieved

considerable popularity and became stardard school texts.

An-

other indication of the proximity of prose to verse in the Middle

Ages

is

the frequency with

which writers engage

in the exercise

of

paraphrase, of turning prose works into verse and verse works into prose. Yet another sign of the closeness of prose

the fact that as the use of structural poetry,

rhyme

(

increases in medieval

sive

compositum )

which the ends of adjacent or near-adjacent recognized as a distinct Lastly, is

it

is

prose in

rhymed

—

is

stylistic category."

significant that Dante’s

On

Vernacular Eloquence,

summary of much medieval poetics and the first work on literature in modern languages, treats poetry

primary

art

paragraph of Book fWJe declare is

cola are

—

both a

substantial as the

is

increases in medieval prose as well. In fact, in the later

it

Middle Ages, rhymed prose mixtum

which

and verse

equally

fit

and prose II,

Dante

as the

secondary

art. In

the

first

says:

in the first place that the illustrious Italian

for use in prose (prosaice)

because prose writers rather get

this

and

in verse

(

vernacular

metrice ). But

language from poets, and be-

cause poetry seems to remain a pattern to prose writers, and not the converse, which things appear to confer a certain supremacy, first

disentangle this language as to

its

let

us

use in meter (metricum)."'

Because the Middle Ages maintained

a tradition in

which

prose looked to verse for structural order (or continued to share

83

MISSING MEASURES with verse a concern with rhythmical arrangement), one cannot

movement

point to any

medieval prose analogous to that repre-

in

sented by Gorgias in antiquity. Medieval writers had no need to relate prose to verse.

Latin

Such

a relationship already existed,

which the relationship had been

itself, in

so long

and

and so

firmly established, remained the language of educated Europe.

With

the Renaissance, however, one again sees prose writers

from verse the means

soliciting

for organizing, clarifying,

elevating prose. This development

movement, which arose from barbarized the language.

producing

is

reflected in the Ciceronian

a belief that

medieval Latinists had

The Ciceronian movement aimed

modern Latin based on

a

development

is

at

ancient rhetorical theory in

What

general and on the model of Cicero in particular. significant, the

and

is

more

reflected in the various attempts to

provide the evolving vernaculars with a sophistication equivalent to that of literary Latin.

In English the attempt to appropriate resources of poetry for

prose

most

is

clearly exhibited in John Lyly’s

ism. Characteristic of Lyly’s

book and

Euphues and Euphu-

of Euphuistic style

when

following soliloquy, which Euphues delivers stolen Lucilla

from

he,

is

the

having

been cast

his friend Philautus, has in turn

aside by her in favor of Curio:

O

the counterfaite loue of

Philautus,

I

haue

women. Oh

lost Lucilla,

1

haue

finde againe, a faythfull friende.

A

inconstant sex.

eaten

salt

Had

it

haue

lost

I

shall

hardlye

foolishe Euphues,

why

diddest

lost that

thou leaue Athens the nourse of wisdome, nourisher of wantonesse?

which

I

to inhabite

Naples the

not bene better for thee to haue

with the Philosophers of Greece, then sugar with the court-

iers of Italy?

But behold the course of youth which alwayes inclyneth

to pleasure,

I

friends,

I

forsooke mine olde companions to search for

rejected the graue

follow the braine-sicke

wholy

Ladyes,

my

women

to

spende

will.

my

I

addicted

my

my

to

selfe

lyfe in the lappes

lands in the maintenance of brauerie,

vanities of idle Sonnets."

84

and fatherly consayle of Eubulus,

humor of mine owne

to the seruice of

new

of

witte in the

,

“the superior art” Here we have

repetition

stant”), antithesis (“the

(“O the counterfaite

nourse of wisdome

(“Why

wantonesse”), rhetorical questions not bene better”), parallelism

(“1

addicted”), alliteration (“lyfe

.

We

even have

.

.

.

.

lappes

.

.

Oh

.

(“I

incon-

the nourisher of

Had

it

I

reiected ...

I

Ladyes

.

crescendo

a classical tricolon

.

diddest thou

forsooke ...

.

.

.

.

.

.

haue

.

lands”).

.

... a

lost

faythlull friend”), a succession of three grammatically related

clauses in

which the

encompasses the

final clause

first

is

the longest

and envelops and

two. Lastly, after having gone on for several

more sentences like those cited above, the passage closes with Euphues resolving, in a decasyllabic couplet, to forswear Neapolitan decadence: “1 will to Athens ther to tosse in

my

Naples to lyue with faire lookes.” In trying to give qualities of verse to prose, Lyly

be resuming artistic

a tradition that

prose of the Renaissance, there

literary history.

make

Authors

prose poetic.

They

like

may

be said to

goes back to Gorgias. Yet

ancient prose, and this concern

to

more

bookes, no

a

is

concern that

in the

is

not in

of great importance to recent

is

Lyly are not merely attempting to

are also trying, in an unprecedented way,

compose prose fiction possessing the dignity of verse fiction. At this juncture, it must be recalled again that in antiquity

most

fiction of prestige

is

in

meter. This

is

not to slight ancient

prose fiction like that of Achilles Tatius or Heliodorus.

Not

until

the Renaissance, however, does there arise a wide interest in prose as a

medium

for serious imaginative literature.

reasons for this

new

interest.

One

There are

involves vernacular

several

drama and

the question of whether prose might not be the proper vehicle for

modern

plays; this topic will be

Another

is

examined

in the

the development of the romance, of

notable example and which, though

it

next chapter.

which Euphues

is

a

had ancient antecedents,

was viewed by some Renaissance writers as their age’s most significant contribution to fiction. The romance was frequently written in

and associated with

prose. Dante’s line ( Purgatorio 26.1 18),

“Verses of love and prose romances” romanzi)'

is

an early reflection of

(

Versi d’amove e prose di

this association.

It

should per-

85

MISSING MEASURES haps be added that Dante associated i.x)

romance not simply with prose

On

Vernacular Eloquence,

general but with the French

Hence Renaissance defenders

vernacular in particular.

temporary

in

(

of con-

were, to a certain extent, compelled to defend

fiction

the use of prose in fiction.

Changing cio’s

attitudes towards prose are anticipated by Boccac-

introduction to The Decameron's Fourth Day, during which

Boccaccio discusses his work. At

he modestly characterizes

it

and which

I

mine, which bear no

as “these little stories of

have written, not only

first

in the

title

Florentine vernacular and in prose

{non solamente in fiorentin volgare e in prosa ), but in the most

homely and unassuming his

style

it is

possible to imagine.''

He

shifts

ground, however, when he remarks that well-meaning friends

have told him

that, rather

than scribbling mere prose

amuse women, he should devote himself

to the higher pursuits of

which can claim the genuine sponsorship

verse,

Though acknowledging Muses

may

that such advice

may

cio slyly suggests that he

who

of poetry as those

counsel

him

looking over tales,

“it

my

is

possible that they

however unassuming they may

themselves. as far

so, in

composing these

is,

1

are

them and

closely related enter-

the Muses] have been

writing of these

in the

be,

affinity

The Muses

poetry for

perhaps because they

between the stories,

I

from Mount Parnassus or from the Muses

might be It

And

|

shoulder several times

acknowledge and respect the

Muses.

be sound, Boccac-

think.

women, and it may be that writing writing prose for human women are in fact Indeed,

of the

not be as far removed from the

divine

prises.

tales to

am as

ladies

and

not straying

many

people

'

led to believe.”

in

any

towards prose

case, against a

background

fiction that Philip

of

changing attitudes

Sidney writes

in his Apologie for

Poetrie:

|T]he greatest part of Poets have apparelled their poeticall inventions in that

numbrous kinde

of writing

apparelled, verse being but an

86

which

is

called verse: indeed but

ornament and no cause

to Poetry

...

I

“the superior art” speak to shew, that

not riming

and versing that maketh a Poet, no more then a long gowne maketh an Advocate; who though he pleaded in armor should he an Advocate and no Souldier. it is

Hut

that fayning notable

delightfull teaching, M know a

images of vertues,

vices, or

which must be the

what

els,

it

is

with that

right describing note to

Poet by.

Sidney expresses here tion in

concern with writing respectable ficprose. Furthermore, in his romance, the Arcadia espea

—

cially in the

unfinished second version

own way what

Lyly attempts

“poem,”

a prose

vertues, vices, or

in

— Sidney attempts

Euphues Sidney aims .

a prose narrative “fayning notable

what

els,

to

in his

produce

images of

with that delightfull teaching.” (The

\erse interludes, though interesting in terms of the history of English metric, represent a small part of the work itself.) Sidney’s intentions are disclosed not only by his elaborate style, but also

by

his

formal arrangement of the work, which

five-act

structure for poetic

mended and which treated

drama

that

is

determined by the

Horace had recom-

reveals Sidney’s wish for the Arcadia to be

with the same sort of seriousness accorded metrical

fiction.

Though on behalf

tastes in prose style

change, arguments like Sidney’s

of prose fiction persist into the eighteenth century.

these later arguments, one of the most interesting ing s preface to Joseph Andrews, in which Fielding of prose for

I

AJ S

this

say that

I

it

“Epic

Henry

Field-

defends the use

Comedy

oetry |hpic|

may

is

Of

may

be T ragic or Comic,

be likewise either

in

I

will not scruple to

Verse or Prose; for tho’

it wants one particular, which the Critic enumerates in the constituent Parts of an Epic Poem, namely Metre; yet, when any kind of Writing

contains

other Parts, such as Fable, Action, Characters, Sentiments, and Diction, and is deficient in Metre only; it seems, I think, reasonable to refer it to the Epic; at least, as no Critic hath thought all its

proper to range

Name

to itself

.

15

it

under any other Head, nor

to assign

it

a particular

MISSING MEASURES

Today we that

is

work

the kind of

call

prefigured by F.uphues and the Arcadia, a novel.

An

gence affects poetry profoundly. popular form of non-metrical

extended narrative that

and psychological ally

that Fielding discusses,

absorbs

novel of manners

and

— an

treats the familial, social, political, sexual,

relations of people in

much

emer-

Its

increasingly distinctive

fiction, the

and

of the material

modern society— gradu-

and audience formerly devoted

to poetry. It

must be

was coming

stressed that at just the time the novel

into maturity, poetry

was relinquishing

territories

had long

it

The Romantic movement, though encouraging poets to new areas of experience, also encouraged a spontaneous

occupied.

explore

lyricism that proved detrimental to the long of

may

this

be seen in the unfinished extended works that

are produced in the

Romantic period, works

and Don Juan. These

Christabel,

poem. Evidence

efforts

appear

The

like

Recluse,

have been pro-

to

pelled forward in brief bursts of intensity without the supports of

the pedestrian but perhaps necessary virtues of perspicuously

arranged exposition. Indeed,

poem becomes

riod, the short

occasion

it

of shorter is,

in fact,

is

in the

Romantic and Victorian pe-

the fundamental poetic form.

On

even urged that long poems are but amalgamations

works, as

merely

remark, “What we term

a succession of brief

’ 1

poetical effects.

in Poe’s

'

While

ones

—

that

is

long

a

poem

to say, of brief

in earlier periods, narrative

and dra-

matic modes are often considered the most important ones and often attract the best efforts of the best poets, in the

Romantic

period and the nineteenth century, the long poem, though often

attempted, has comparatively It

is

possible that

if

1

little vitality.

a Milton

had been living

circumstances might have taken a different turn. sible,

the

hour,

at that It

is

also pos-

however, that he might have written a monumental novel

manner

of

Hugo or

Tolstoi rather than a long

Prevailing ideas about poetry

ill

work

in

in

meter.

sustained the long poem.

The

fourth chapter of this study will examine these ideas, which de-

88

“the superior art” from German Aesthetic Idealism and from aspects of Neoplatonic thought. It is enough here to note that the ideas tended to narrow poetry to suggestive lyricality. As a result, there was rive

a

vacuum, which the novel eventually and

literary

successfully

filled.

The

shift of

rical fiction to

“How

in his

I

mean

to

importance from poetry prose fiction

Read”

to say that

—

is

cogently

from the beginning of art,

summarized by Pound

verse at least equal to

fontura business’ the |

to a.d. 1750

to be,

and

if

we

we find the number of interesting the number of prose books still

readable; and the poetry contains the quintessence. said, the

up

literature

and was so considered

read books written before that date in

— from met-

essay:

poetry was the superior

books

to the novel

florid

.

.

.

But, as

embroidery of style]

I

have

set in.

And

one morning Monsieur Stendhal, not thinking of Homer, or Villon, or Catullus, but having a very keen sense of actuality, noticed that ’poetry,’ la poesie, as the

term was then understood, the stuff written

by his French contemporaries, or sonorously rolled

him from the French stage, was a damn nuisance. And he remarked that poetry, with its bagwigs and its bohwigs, its padded calves and its periwigs, its fustian a la Louis XIV was greatly inferior to prose for conveying at

,

a clear idea of the diverse states of

ments du

And prose’

.

(‘les

mouve-

coeur’).

at that .

our consciousness

moment

the serious art of writing ‘went over to

.

(EE, 31)

In the second half of the nineteenth century, poets developed

two responses pursue

to the

triumph of the novel. The

a path, already

first

of these was to

given preliminary exploration by certain of

the Romantics, into pure poetry, into a poetic art that accepts

even glories

on

its

in its

and

progressive attenuation and that turns inward

own medium

for

its

resources and subjects.

Swinburne

the most notable English representative of this response.

is

The

second response involved an effort to recover materials increas-

89

MISSING MEASURES ingly claimed by prose fiction, fied

by Browning,

much

and

this

response

of whose work aims

is

best exempli-

accommodating

at

and tones of the novel. For instance,

the narrative qualities

Browning’s most famous long poem, The Ring and the Book, of 1868-69, attempts to do been doing for

a

decade

in

pentameters what Wilkie Collins had

in his

Browning’s poem deals with

a

manner of Collins, by having sion their different

The

plot of

famous crime and unfolds,

in the

popular mystery

stories.

interested parties deliver in succes-

and conflicting views of the

many of Browning’s

poems

other

case. Similarly,

are character studies or

little

novels in meter.

Browning’s admirers recognized the unusual enterprise

which he was engaged. T dialogue,

“The

his recognition

Critic as Artist,”

appears

in

in

Oscar Wilde’s

which was published

in 1890, the

year after Browning’s death, and in which one of the characters observes:

And as what will he be remembered? As a poet? Ah, not as a poet! He will he remembered as a writer of fiction. The only man who can touch the hem of his garment Yes,

Browning was

.

is

.

great.

.

George Meredith. Meredith

Browning.

Though

this

is

a

prose

Browning, and so

is

'*

compliment

is,

to be sure, cleverly

sincere: in the context of the Victorian era,

freedom from the

sterilities of

much

it

backhanded,

it is

indicates Browning’s

of the poetry of the time.

The same view of Browning appears in the criticism of Ford, who favorably contrasts Browning’s prosaic qualities with the insipid

idiom

of

most Victorian

excepts Christina Rossetti and

sweeping censure

was an

poets. In

Thus

to Revisit,

Browning from

his

Ford

otherwise

of Victorian verse, saying: “Christina Rossetti

infinitely great

master of words, but the emotions her

work always gave me were

those of reading prose

— and

so

it

was

with Browning.” In addition, Ford remarks that Browning and

Hardy, by rejecting Victorian diction, were precursors of the

90

,

the superior art Imagists: “In the matter oflanguage at least,

then Mr. Hardy, showed the

first

Browning and

way for the Imagiste group— word from an immense, and Mr.

Browning dragging in any old Hardy doing the same thing from

a rather limited,

vocabulary”

(TTR, 131,153).

Among

poets

who

this century, there

is

begin to publish

in the first

two decades of

an acute awareness of the alternatives repre-

sented by Swinburne and Browning, and a sense that

it is

neces-

sary to choose

between them. This situation is particularly observthe young Pound, who is attracted to the mellifiuous

able in

suavities of

qualities of

much

of

Swinburne and at the same time wants to bring modern prose fiction into poetry. On the one hand,

Pound’s early work

is

frankly Swinburnean

—

full

of

inversions, archaisms,

and thee-ings and thou-ings. On the other hand, a smaller number of poems aim at a colloquial idiom and, in matter and treatment, follow the example of Browning. This stylistic

schizophrenia mirrors Pound’s attitudes towards the two

Swinburne is, for Pound, the figure who rescued English verse from a decline which began at the time of the Puritan revolt, and Browning is, in Pound’s eyes, the author of the best single poets:

Men and Women, and the creator of Sordello. Though neither writer is com-

collection of Victorian verse,

the highly suggestive pletely satisfactory

— Browning

for all his talent

smacks of huck-

and Swinburne for all his melodic dexterity lacks direct engagement with the world the two combined represent. Pound implies, the “whole or perfect poet” LE 293). sterish vulgarity

—

(

Early in his career,

Pound

s

divided allegiance

is

weighted

in

the direction of Swinburne. direction of

Browning

as

The weight shifts, however, in the time passes. The change is disclosed in

Personae, the 1926 edition of Pound’s shorter

work,

a collection

from which the author suppresses many of his youthful Swinburnean pieces while retaining the material more in Browning’s style. The change is also disclosed in the initial version of his first 1

Canto,

which appeared

in Poetry in 1917. In this version.

9i

Pound

MISSING MEASURES opens by addressing Browning and by candidly indicating that he plans to forgo aesthetic purity in favor of the “rag-bag” (later he calls

“hodge-podge”) approach

it

composition exhibited

to

in

Sordello:

Hang

it

But say Let

in

Your

all,

want

I

to, say

take your whole bag of tricks.

I

your quirks and tweeks, and say the thing’s an art-form.

Sordello,

Needs such Say that

As

there can be but one Sordello!

I

a

and

that the

rag-hag to

dump my

fresh sardines

modern world

stuff all

catch, shiny

its

thought

and

in;

silvery

Happing and slipping on the marginal

cobbles? (I

stand before the booth, the speech; hut the truth

Is

inside this discourse

—

this

booth

is

full of

the

marrow

of

wisdom.) (iive

It

is

up

th’ intaglio

method.

"

from the Canto, and from the Hugh Selwyn

clear

Mauberley sequence of 1920, that Pound regrets giving up “th' intaglio

method.” Nevertheless, he

feels

he must follow the course

marked out by Browning or yield the field of literature to prose writers. As he says further on in the Canto, in lines which resume the theme of the beginning, “|S]hall do your trick, the show(Or sulk and leave the word to man’s booth. Boh Browning, / I

.

novelists?).”

one sees an early

and an ultimate rejection fiction. Especially

gifts,

.

21

In Eliot, too,

Swinburne,

.

in

of

it

interest in

for attitudes associated

revealing in this regard

which

Swinburnean

is

Eliot’s

Eliot sympathetically analyzes

style

with prose

1920 essay on

Swinburne’s

hut concludes the analysis with the judgment that Swin-

burne’s airily “uprooted” style simply will not do for the poet. Eliot goes,

however,

a step further

modern

than Pound does

in his

Canto. For Eliot suggests, as a stylistic alternative to Swinburne, not a poet

whose works,

hut two writers

92

who

like

Browning’s, resemble prose

are in fact novelists:

fiction,

,

“the superior art” (

)nly a

man

of

genius could dwell so exclusively and consistently

among words as Swinburne. His language is not, like the language of bad poetry, dead. It is very much alive, with this singular life of its own. But the language which struggling to digest

new

new

feelings,

more important to us is that which is and express new objects, new groups of objects, is

aspects, as, for instance, the prose

of Mr. James

Joyce or the earlier Conrad.

One

which one

sees here in Eliot that

sees also in

Mauberley: the criticism of a deficient poetic

which

is

style,

the escape

says,

“His true Penelope was Flaubert.”

the passage just cited, Eliot’s Penelopes are Joyce

And much

same

the

three writers

to poets

situation,

whom

and prose writers

it

may

s

from

represented by the style of a novelist or novelists.

Mauberley, Pound

The

Pound

Of In

and Conrad.

be added, applies to Ford.

he consistently recommends as models, alike, are

Henry James, W. H. Hudson,

and Conrad. This

of the prosaic and the novelistic

belief in the efficacy

evident, for example,

when Pound,

in his essay

“The

Artist,” quotes Stendhal’s statement that the novel “is

is

also

Serious

concerned

with giving a clear and precise idea of the movements of the

and then

spirit

close as prose, it.

.

.

.

And

God’s sake viewpoint

if

pour dormer une

we cannot attain

let

us shut up”

when he argues

torian period

we

says that “if

idee claire et precise, let us

to

LE

(

can have a poetry that comes as

such a poetry, noi 54, 55).

have

altri poeti, for

Ford adopts

a similar

that the decline of poetry in the Vic-

was due almost

entirely to the fact that poets did not

adequately appreciate or attempt to master procedures and qualities

of sound prose composition: “|T|he reason for the intolerably

dull effect is

produced by nearly

all

modern and semi-modern

verse

simply that the poet as a rule considers himself too important a

person to descend to the technique of the creative prose writer.”

And Ford will

goes on to say that,

have to bring to

novelist: “|I|f

it

some

you arrogate

that, let us say, a poet

is

if

poets are to restore their art, they

of the attitudes

and techniques of the

to yourself the title

to a story-teller as

is

of poet and claim a barrister to

93

an

,

MISSING MEASURES attorney sion

—

the

member

— you ought

to

the lower branch''

(

have

more

of a

technically learned profes-

at least the skill of the

TTR

lower members of

153-54).

So, too, with Eliot. Cautioning poets against the use of rhyme,

he argues:

“When

the comforting echo of

rhyme

removed,

is

success or failure in the choice of words, in the sentence structure, in the order, is

is

once more apparent.

at

Rhyme removed,

the poet

once held up to the standards of prose’’ (TCC, 188-89).

at

BBC, commenting on Eliot and verse, W. B. Yeats remarks that after

Likewise, in a 1936 lecture for the

on the

eclat

of Eliot’s early

the publication of Prufrocl{

word

and Other

Observations,

“No

romantic

or sound, nothing reminiscent, nothing in the least like the

painting of Ricketts could be permitted henceforth. Poetry must

resemble prose.”

To ter,

M

we shall examine in the in making poetry more

anticipate a subject that

the modernists’ interest

fifth

chap-

like prose

reflected a desire to obtain not only qualities of the novel, but also

an exactitude comparable to that of scientific discourse. time of the founding of the Royal Society century, prose

is

From

the

seventeenth

in the

often associated with scientifically accurate ob-

servation, verse with fanciful, figurative speech. In his History of

the Royal Society, in

Thomas

advocating reforms

in

Sprat says that the Society’s members,

English style and usage, aim

at

“a close,

naked, natural way of speaking, positive expressions, clear senses, a native easiness,

bringing

plainness as they can.”

all

And

things as near the Mathematical

it is

noteworthy that

in his Life

and the

Writings of Cowley, Sprat praises Cowley’s Pindaric odes

ways

that their lines of unpredictably varying lengths suggest

prose: “|T|hat for

which

chiefiy to be preferr’d

certainly the style

and

of

all

is its

think this inequality of

I

near affinity with Prose

most useful kind

of

Writing of

business and conversation.”

all

.

number

is

which

is

.

.

others, for

As we

it is

the

shall see, the

experimental poets of the twentieth century wished to write with scientific precision,

were drawn

94

and

to “prosaic”

this

was an additional reason

matter and rhythm.

that they

“the superior art" In the context of their desire to rid poetry of vapidity inflation, the modernists’ effort to

and admirable. Again,

perfectly natural

chapter, the

move

modern movement

is,

in

verse toward prose

as

we noted

idiom and

this respect, not

speech. Yet, historically speaking, there the

modern

whether

it

effort.

was

The

been whether

is

it

unlike

impa-

natural poetic

something unusual

in

question for Lyly and Sidney had been

possible to write prose fiction

rival that of poetry.

more

a desire for a

is

in the first

earlier literary revolutions. Earlier poets often expressed

tience with dated

and

The

whose

vitality

would

question for Gorgias and Isocrates had

was possible

to write prose

works from which

people would derive a pleasure comparable to that pleasure they derived from metrical compositions. For the leaders of the ern revolution, the question

which

as vigorous

is

3.

is

whether

and engaging

as

it is

mod-

possible to write verse

good imaginative

prose.

Poetry Seeding Freedom

on the Model of Prose

Modern poetry, then, found itself in an unprecedented position. Modern poets were forced, as earlier reformers were not, to come to grips with an impressive body of prose fiction. They were forced appeared fiction

to

compare

their art,

to be in a state

which was metrical and which

of decline, with an ascendant form of

produced without meter. As we saw

in the last chapter,

conventional metric had become identified with the shortcomings

of Victorian verse. In view of these circumstances, perhaps

should not be surprised that the Ford-Pound

must be

at least as well

written as prose

if

maxim

it is

we

that “verse

to be poetry”

was

converted into the idea that verse might profitably be written, as

was the novel, without meter.

One

sees this conversion in the

the nineties,

“formula” that Ford drafted

when he began experimenting with

in

vers libre. In the

95

MISSING MEASURES

first

chapter, this formula

that

its

cited,

and

it

may

he remembered

individual articles were:

that a that

was

poem must be compounded

surrounded

us; that

it

must be written

in exactly

vocabulary as that which one used for one’s prose; that, in verse,

must attack some subject

it

marmoreal treatment than that,

if

were

it

to be

is

everyday

of observation of the

that

needed

if it

life

the

same

were

to he

a slightly

more

expedient for the paragraph of a novel;

rhymed, the rhyme must never lead

introduction of unnecessary thought; and,

no exigency

lastly, that

metre must interfere with the personal cadence

to the

of the writer’s

of

mind

or the pressure of the recorded emotion. (

TTR

,

206-07)

Beginning with the notion that poetry should address

if

in the

must not be allowed If

and

same vocabulary as that which one would one were writing prose. Ford ends with the idea that meter

should be written use

real life

verse

to interfere with poetry.

not metrical, a question arises as to

is

how

it

can be

defined in compositional terms. Does free verse represent a species of

tion

what has been

This ques-

cannot be definitively answered. Nevertheless, one can say

the following. insofar as

On

traditionally regarded as prose?

it

On

the one hand, free verse

is

certainly verse,

has been accepted as verse by custom in this century.

the other hand, free verse

is

prose, insofar as the principles

with which the leaders of the modern

movement

explain free

verse are principles customarily elaborated to explain prose.

can best appreciate

this latter aspect of free verse

We

by scrutinizing

several of these principles.

The most common and comprehensive ists It is

advance

is

that free verse

is,

whom

Ford

own brand

96

its

cites

of

what we now

call

(First Series, 1838),

was

work

Tupper’s Proverbial Philosophy

designated by

author as “Rhythmics.”

(TTR,

vers hbre,

modern-

though not metrical, rhythmical.

significant that the earliest popular

free verse,

principle the

of

'

Similarly, a poet

198) as a distinguished precursor of his

William Ernest Henley, describes the

“the superior art” touching tree verse-like poems he composed long period of

had

illness as

unrhyming rhythms

“those

tried to quintessentialize, as

rhyme,

my

in the 1870s

(I

believe)

a

which

I

one scarce can do

impressions of the Old Edinburgh Infirmary.”

himself reHects this aspect of free verse theory when,

Libre” chapter of Thus to

one extreme of which

is

in the

in

Ford “Vers

he constructs a linear diagram,

Revisit,

represented by the factual prose of

documents and the other extreme

service

in

during

of

which

is

civil

represented

by highly rhetorical and musical verse, such as the Marseillaise the intermediate area being occupied by forms of prose that are increasingly “creative” as they verge

—

and verse

towards the mid-

point and each other. Ford writes of the diagram:

And

so the case for Vers Libre

It

is

made

senses will

for

deny

even the

that,

is

between the entrenched

No

Prose-Nor-Verse?

And few who

deny that

cate

form

of

this

all

is

Man's Land that

is

Isocrates uses

of Prosaists and

lines

the territory of Neither-

It is

form

the

of incised writing, of

mar-

— rhythm! (

is

in his

the oldest, the most primitive, the least sophisti-

literature.

Ford

who

have given the matter any attention

moreal inscription, of the prophets

In essence.

For

least intelligent reader.

Versificators lies a

will

made.

TTR

,

194-95)

defining rhythm in terms of the opposition

when he

surviving fragment of what

says, in a

is

evidently a lost Art of Rhetoric: “|P]rose must not be merely prose, or

it

will be dry;

should be

nor metrical, or

its

compounded with every

defining, in other words, the

same

art will be undisguised; but

it

rhythm.” "" Isocrates

is

Man’s Land that Ford

is

sort of

No

defining, and for Isocrates, as for Ford, this territory

it is

For

embodies rhythm rather than meter,

free

occupied by vers

If free verse generally

verse

is

occupied by

libre.

embodies particular principles

sociated with prose.

“rhythm.”

artistic prose.

Yet for Isocrates, the territory

Ford,

is

One of

these

is

that earlier periods have as-

the principle of suggesting

97

,

MISSING MEASURES meter, while at the same time avoiding verse, this principle

is

most

it.

With regard

clearly expressed by Eliot:

|T|hc most interesting verse which has yet been written

guage has been done either by taking

at all,

and constantly approximating between hxity and Hux,

this contrast

monotony, which

the very

is

life

illustrate his

ment” and ments:

“It

is

or taking no

it,

It is

unperceived evasion ol

this

of verse.

tcc

185)

;

remarks, Eliot quotes Hulme’s “The

a passage

our lan-

to a very simple one.

(

To

in

simple lorm, like the

a very

iambic pentameter, and constantly withdrawing from

lorm

to Iree

Embank-

from Pound’s “Near Perigord,” and com-

obvious that the charm of these lines could not be,

without the constant suggestion and the skilful evasion of iambic

pentameter

”

(TCC,

186).

These observations resemble those

when he

that

Demetrius makes

many passages owes His members seem to

says (183) of Plato’s prose: “Plato in

his elegance directly to the

glide along

and

rhythm.

.

.

.

to be neither altogether metrical

Eliot’s observations also

nor unmetrical.”

resemble those Cicero makes

urges ( Orator 198) that “in spoken prose, a passage

rhythmical not but

when

argument

it

when

it

comes very

that, in

is

composed

is

regarded as

entirely of metrical forms,

close to being so.”

Furthermore,

writing free verse, the poet should

tween affirmations and denials

of

when he

Eliot's

move

be-

metrical expectation recalls

Quintilian’s suggestion (9.4. 144) that in prose, “It will therefore be

desirable from time to time that in certain passages the

rhythm

should be deliberately dissolved.” With respect to

this last point,

one might remind oneself that Latin

different

English; thus,

it

would be wrong

rhythmical dissolution

in

is

from

to suggest that the aural effect of

an oration would be exactly the same as

the effect in an English free verse is

in its stress

poem. T he

principle,

however,

very similar.

Another principle advanced by leaders

98

of the

modern move-

,

“the superior art ment

is

that in tree verse, the poet

movement

ot the

individual

lines. In tree verse, this

versification

is

poem

is

concerned with the overall

rather than the metrical structure of the

argument

sacrificed in the interests of broader rhythmical

arrangement. Pound succinctly expresses states,

runs, conventional

“Prosody

is

when

this principle

the articulation of the total sound of a

he

poem,”

and when he subsequently remarks, “There is undoubtedly a sense ot music that takes count of the ‘shape’ of the rhythm in a melody rather than of bar divisions” LE 421). Eliot expresses (

this principle

when he contends

music of verse

that “the

is

not a

by line matter, but a question of the whole poem. Only with

line

this in

mind can we approach

and

tern

free verse”

(OPP,

36).

the vexed question of formal pat-

The

principle can also be traced in

William Carlos Williams’ argument that some of Milton’s work resembles

modern

free verse because Milton, like the

make

experimentalists, exhibits a “tendency to

graph rather than the

’

the verse para-

'

line his basic unit.”

Again, the principle thus expounded with respect to prose. Quintilian

modern

It

distinguishes

fact that

in

is

is

“|R]hythm has unlimited space over which .

.

.

earlier

expounded

principle with

which

from

verse:

prose

115-16)

(9.4.50;

the spaces of meter are confined.

one

may

it

Further

it

range, whereas

is

not so impor-

tant for us to consider (in prose) the actual feet as the general

rhythmical effect of the period. ture will hold the in poetry.” alists

in a

I

same place

.

.

Therefore rhythmical strucis

held by versification

the

modern experiment-

in prose that

n other words, just as

suggest substituting,

.

in

some of

prosodic theory, rhythmos (rhythm

broad sense) for metron (metrical arrangement

in particular),

so they suggest substituting, in actual practice, compositio (the

some generally orderly making of verses).

putting together of words in versificatio (the specific

Another concept sometimes advanced by that

it

is

fashion) for

free verse poets

is

possible to establish, in free verse, an indeterminate unit

of versification.

This concept

is

anticipated by Gerard

Manley

99

MISSING MEASURES

Hopkins

Poems

his Preface to his

in

“Sprung Rhythm,” saying

discusses

to four syllables, regularly,

weak

and

(

that

1876-89),

it

which he

in

from one

involves “feet

for particular effects

any number

Hopkins cites the “First Paeon” as being particularly appropriate to Sprung Rhythm and that, in discussing the nature of Sprung Rhythm, he

of slack or

urges

Rhythm

is

common in

of

first

that

it

is

It

interesting that

is

the most natural of things. For (1)

In practice, its

“Sprung

prosaically free of affectation:

speech and of written prose,

them.

quality,

all

syllables.”

Hopkins’

the

it is

when rhythm

verse, with

its

frequently insistent alliteration, and

rhythm

of

perceived

is

heavily accentual its

rhyme, seems

some ways remote from the work of the twentieth-century free versers; Hopkins himself compares his procedures to those of the in

older purely accentual tradition of Piers Plowman. Yet, insofar as his theory of

Sprung Rhythm appeals

to prose

rhythm and pro-

accommodate weak syllables,” he

poses an expandable metrical foot, a foot that can “for particular effects any

number

modern

prefigures certain

of slack or

experimentalists.

who was Hopkins’

Robert Bridges,

and who edited and

friend

published in 1918 Hopkins’ poems and preface, developed along different lines, ideas like those

known exponent who,

Verse” (HR, as

it

of an indeterminate metrical unit

late in his career,

variable foot.”

does

Hopkins pursued. Yet

developed

Though Foe

a theory of

invented this term in his “Rationale of

nomenclature

is

“caesuras” as

own

without being influenced conceptually by Foe’s use of

purposes, it.

Indeed,

Will iams’ discussion of the variable foot in the Princeton Ency-

clopedia, he in the

does not mention Foe, nor does he include Foe’s essay

bibliography attached to the discussion.'

Will iams’ variable foot

squeeze or

much

somewhat murky); Williams

appears merely to have adopted the term for his

in

Williams,

what he termed “the

50), Foe’s “variable foot” involves

feet (Foe’s

is

the best-

more

it

down

a sort of prosodic accordion.

Williams sees

in

One can

draw it out to eight or nine Hopkins a suggestion of this

to a syllable or two, or

syllables.

100

is

1

“the superior art”

new

type of poetic foot. “Hopkins, in a constipated

‘sprung’ measures, half realized

Williams

way with

but not freely enough,” says

it

And

1953 letter to Richard Eberhart {SL, $21).

in a

his

in a

(1) to Eberhart, Williams discusses his theory, citing the 1954 etter l

following

(2)

lines: (3)

(4)

The

smell of the heat

boxwood

is

(5)

when

rousing us

(6)

movement of the

a stirs

our thoughts

that

had no

to a

life,

life in

them

a life in

and then commenting: “Count

may

not agree with

{SL, 326, 327). ostensibly

air

We

my

which

ear, but that

metrical

.

.

a single beat to

have here, that

possess

.

is

is,

each numeral. You

way

the

I

count the line”

six successive feet,

equivalence

which

each other (their

to

equivalence consisting of their each having one beat), yet which are also variable (their variability consisting of their

ing different

An

numbers

of unstressed syllables).

interesting feature of Williams’ variable feet,

terminate units of versification generally,

and

cient paeonic feet cases, in

accommodat-

we have

both cases,

In both

clausulae.

units that are longer than

we

is

and of inde-

that they recall an-

modern and

normal poetic

ancient

feet,

find writers exploring such units for the

and,

same

reason: the units have no association with conventional meters.

But the comparison does not extend beyond the

champions

of the

a certain point.

Even

paeon seem to have believed that pae-

onic rhythm was applicable only to the beginnings and ends of clauses

pauses

and periods

— whereas

throughout

his

marked grammatical indeterminate feet uses them

clausulae simply

a poet writing in

poem. Furthermore, even the clausulae were

tively well defined ear,

— and

and appear

to

have been recognizable to the

whereas the modern variable measures are

said to be

—

variable

— and

rela-

just

what they are

they discourage perception of any but

101

MISSING MEASURES the roughest proportional relationships. of

two

syllables

prosodically the

same

can assert that a loot

as a loot ol seven or eight

may

But the most sensitive listener or reader

syllables.

determine

a loss to

such

is

One

a similarity,

much

well be at

an identity, between

less

leet.

Several other interesting resemblances between ancient critics ol prose

and modern

Iree verse theorists should be

mentioned.

Both often contend that the writer must avoid meter

seeming

“Above that our

Quintilian says (9.4.147) of prose rhythm,

artificial. all

it

to avoid

upon it spontaneous How, not

necessary to conceal the care expended

is

rhythms may seem

to possess a

have been the result of elaborate search or compulsion.”

same grounds

the

that

modern

warn

critics

It is

so to

on

poets to go in fear ol

metrical regularity. For instance. Ford says that “the worst ol verse forms

is

that they lead almost inevitably to imitation

almost inevitably to insincerity” (CIV, fear of

many modern

tion

they write metrically

if

161).

do not appear

much

is

ancient

if,

in lorsenic

debate,

sufficiently spontaneous.

orators argue that their art ol

among

like the fear

Another interesting circumstance

some advocates

generally, the

poets that they will be convicted ol affecta-

orators that they will lose persuasiveness

they

More

and

modern

is

is

that just as

some ancient

more demanding than

free verse

verse, so

contend that their

art

is

more taxing than metrical composition. In both cases, the argument turns on the same idea: the poet working in meter has a pattern to assist him in organizing his material, while the writer not working in meter must create his structure ex nihilo. As Isocrates puts it (Evagoras, 10)/ prose is more difficult than verse because “the poets compose all their works with metre and rhythm, while the orators do not share in any of these advantages; and these lend such charm that even though the poets may be deficient in style

and thoughts,

yet by the very spell of their

rhythm and harmony they bewitch the

same

102

position

when he

their listeners.” Cicero takes

urges (Orator,

198) that “prose

is

“the superior art” harder to write than verse, because

and

which must he followed.

fixed law

there

no rule except that the

is

cramped or

in the latter there

is

a definite

In a speech, however,

must not be straggling or

style

loose or chaotic.”

we

Similarly, as

will see in the next chapter, Eliot contrasts the

straightforwardness of meaning and metric in a poet like Kipling with a poetry based on “a musical pattern of emotional overtones”

(OPP, 244); Eliot suggests that poetry which

merely “verse,’ while poetry which ture of

is

more genuinely

contrary, (

“

rhyme:

TCC

,

it

I

A

he rejection of rhyme

imposes

188). In brief,

two

difficulty of the

meter and

“poetry.”

a

much

it is

as

if

is

is

metrically direct

musically elusive

is

in struc-

related idea informs his view is

not a leap at facility; on the

severer strain

upon

the language”

the age-old debate about the relative

literary arts

—

poetry with the constraints of

same time the support and sensuous appeal of meter, prose with the freedom from order and at the same time at the

the need to approximate order

—

is

transposed in the

modern

period into a debate about the relative difficulty of metrical as

opposed

to free verse.

There

is

another interesting feature of the situation

been examining.

If in antiquity

and the

earlier

Middle Ages there

— an —

existed the idea of a single ars dictaminis

which embraced both poetry and prose

some

we have

art

of discourse

that art involved, to

and rhythmical arrangement. century, there seems a single art discourse, an art

extent, the study of metrical

At times

in this

based, however, on the absence of such arrangement. For instance,

Williams remarks, referring

his verse

and

to

to his use of prose passages in

Wallace Stevens’ statement

(in

his preface to

Williams’ Collected Poems 1921-1931) that Williams had a “passion for the antipoetic”: It

is

not an antipoetic device, the repeating of

calculation

makes me want

to puke.

writing, both a matter of the

words

for the

It is

which piece of mis-

that prose

words and an

and verse are both

interrelation

between

purpose of exposition, or other better defined purpose

I0 3

MISSING MEASURES

i

!

t\f^uo 09 of the ^

art.

Please

do not

prose and verse are to

|

stress other

me

the

same

“meanings.”

I

want

to say that

thing. (SL, 263)

* I

A is*

And () ne

discussing the presence ol prose correspondence in

0 f Paterson, Williams

The purpose “writing” to else

—

says:

end

is

partly ironic, partly

plain that even poetry

is

writing and nothing

ol the long letter at the

make

it

Book

so that there’s a logical continuity in the art, prose, verse: an

identity.

Frankly I’m sick I

ol the constant

aping

ol the Stevens’

dictum that

resort to the antipoetic as a heightening device. That's plain

and everyone copies tween prose and base, the

it.

.

.

verse, not

.

The

truth

is

an antithesis.

that there’s It all

rests

an

crap—

identity be-

on the same time

same measure. (SL, 265)

Many

would have agreed with Williams' contention that prose and verse are related. They would probably have taken up that relationship, however, from the side of poetry and earlier writers

metrical order. For Williams, the relationship seems to involve

its

first

and foremost prose and the freedom of

The modern late

article

Williams refers

rhythms.

appropriation, lor theories ol verse, of ideas tradi-

tionally associated with prose his

its

on to

free

seems

verse

Norden’s

lor

to

have been unconscious. In

the

Princeton Encyclopedia,

Antil{e Kunstprosa,

which was

rhythm

nal study (originally published in 1898) of ancient prose

and which was by that time is

in its fifth edition.’’

a semi-

Otherwise, there

no evidence that the experimentalists realized the sources of

their ideas.

Perhaps

this

should not surprise us because most ol the

early scholarship about ancient prose

rhythm was

in

German.

Nevertheless, Saintsbury’s History of English Prose Rhythm, which

makes note ol the German work, though Saintsbury himself is more concerned with the development of English prose than with matters related to prose rhythm in genwas published

104

1

in 1912,

,

“the superior art” eral.

Moreover, most of the relevant

in their original

that Eliot

languages and

and Pound, both

of

were

classical texts

one would think

in translations;

whom expressed

available,

interest in classical

might have known some of the material. As it is, their not knowing the material would not matter, except that there is an important point made throughout earlier discussions of meter literature,

and rhythm, a point is

that

crucially pertinent to

point

is

from Aristotle forward and

clear

any kind

formal or

of poetry,

free.

that

The

speech can be ordered generally by rhythm, particu larly by meter; take away meter, and you have nothing left but this:

is

rhythm. Equally important writers

who believed

is

J

the point, stressed even by those ancient

prose to be superior to verse, that rhythmical

organization has meaning only with reference to a literary context in

which meter

is

practiced. Meters are specific types of the

general quality of rhythm, and one cannot do

much

in the

more way of

discussing general rhythmical effects except against the backdrop

more makes

of the

particular structure of meter. Interestingly enough,

Eliot

this point

that “the ghost of in

even the

as

may draw

his

we

when he

some simple metre should lurk behind

‘freest’ verse: to

withdraw

rouse’’

(

advance menacingly

TCC

make

meter once and for

all.

a pass

This

as

we

says

the arras

doze, and

The problem is that the poet cry of “How now? A rat? Dead

187).

sword and with the

for a ducat, dead!’’

much

with reference to free verse

is

through the in fact

arras,

and

finish off

what has happened with

verse since the triumph of the

poets cease to

modern revolution. Many 1 “withdraw’’ meter. They appear simply to ignore

the question of poetic structure entirely.

There

is

a related

the experimentalists

development

that

must be mentioned.

abandoned meter

in

hopes of emulating

qualities of prose fiction, they did so, as

we have

to a particular literary situation. Poetry

had

the novel

was

etry without

flourishing.

meter had

Maybe

When

seen, in response

fallen

on hard times;

the experiment of writing po-

to be tried.

What

has since happened,

105

MISSING MEASURES however,

many

this:

is

dures, yet remote

poets, following the modernists’ proce-

from the context

taken the view that d one

work

tries to

have

ot the modernists’ revolt,

meter and has trouble

in

expressing what one wants to express, one should as a matter of course turn to tree verse, rather than trying patiently to improve

and broaden one’s

An example

skills in

conventional versification.

of this attitude

is

provided by one of the most

influential poets of the second half of this century, Robert Lowell.

Though with

he wrote his early verse in meter, he became dissatisfied

because, as he says in an interview in the Paris Review in

it

the sixties, “I couldn’t get any experience into tight metrical

forms. ...

meter plastered

that the

felt

1

nerisms on what

was trying

I

hampered me.” This

terribly

namely, that “Prose

ing, etry.

.

.

.

is

to say to

feeling in

|Ojn the whole prose

was

is

but

“I

got awfully tedious

it

it

related to another feel-

a

better off than po-

from

less cut off

Lowell remarks that he attempted for

and man-

such an extent that

many ways

is.”

found

difficulties

life

than poetry

time to write in prose

working out

and

transitions

putting in things that didn’t seem very important but were necessary to the prose continuity.” Faced with these problems, Lowell ” moved into free verse and into what he terms “breaking forms.”

One appreciates Lowell’s feeling. At the same time, one cannot help imagining Homer telling the Chios Quarterly, “When be1

gan the

Iliad,

1

had

crazy notion that

this

hexameters.

Can you

was no way

I

believe that? Well,

was going

to

fit

into those rigid six-feet lines. to

break

position,

down my “This

is

1

1

would write

only thing to do,

1

and Hector

realized,

forms.” Dionysius says ( 20 ) of Homer’s

the practice of

Homer,

in

soon learned that there

the passions of Achilles

The

it

was

com-

that surpassing genius,

although he has but one metre and few rhythms. Within these limits, nevertheless, artistic

place

he

is

continually producing

new

effects

and

refinements, so that actually to see the incidents taking

would give no advantage over our having them thus de-

scribed.”

(

106

)ne could apply similar tribute to Dante or Shakespeare

“the superior art” or Emily Dickinson or almost any excellent poet. admire them in part because they write distinctively and vitally in meter.

We

There

is

interview,

a related issue.

Lowell

may

well feel, as he says in his

quite hard to think of a

young poet who has the vitality, say, ol Salinger or Saul Bellow. Yet, in making this statement, Lowell might have recalled that Salinger’s and Bel“It’s

low’s fictions

move and

Bellow were willing

to

entertain us partly because Salinger and

undertake the “awfully tedious working

out of transitions and putting in things that didn t seem very important but were necessary to the prose continuity.” An unfortunate aspect of Lowell s attitude is that it entails dispensing with

something

of great value

—

poetic meter

return the discipline of prose fiction.

— without securing

leaves poetry

It

in

awkwardly

between verse and prose; offering the poet the challenges of neither art, and the reader the appeals of neither. And thisis not the end that Ford, Pound, and Eliot had insisted that poetry

Urging

that

mind when they should become more like the novel. in

Wordsworth’s emphasis on

quired qualification, Coleridge observed ter of his

Biographia Literaria that

it

is

“real language” re-

in the

eighteenth chap-

one thing

employ words drawn from common language. matter to suggest that poets should write

manner

that people use in conversation.

initially

in

for a poet to It

the

is

another

haphazard

One might make

a

comparable observation about the modernists’ interest in prose fiction. It is one thing to say that poets should, if they wish, try to incorporate features of the novel into verse. to say that, to

do

this,

It is

another matter

they should write in the loose rhythms of

prose.'

most

more favorably situated than verse. Prose is the more accommodating medium. It is more fluid and variable; it more readily tolerates different kinds of expression. In

respects, prose

is

Nonetheless, throughout most of literary history, readers and listeners have loved and venerated verse more, and verse has served as the primary literary

art. Its

primacy has derived from

107

'

MISSING MEASURES meter.

ment

The

has, by itself,

concluding

In I)r.

|

and aural beauty of

intellectual

fine metrical

arrange-

outweighed the manifold advantages of prose.

this chapter,

one can do no better than

to cite

Johnson’s observations on this point: Versification, or the art of modulating his numbers,

necessary to a poet. Every other

power by which

enlightened or the imagination enchanted

Hut the poet has

may

is

indispensably

the understanding

be exercised

this peculiar superiority, that to all the

is

in prose.

powers which

the perfection of every other composition can require he adds the faculty of joining

music with reason, and

senses and the passions.

I

of acting at

suppose there are few

themselves touched by poetical melody, and they are

more

or less

moved by

the

who do

who will

same thoughts

once upon the not feel

not confess that as they are con-

veyed by different sounds, and more affected by the same words

one order than conferred upon

do not perceive

in another.

men it

or to

cannot give delight.

iott

in

s

The

perception of

harmony

is

indeed

degrees very unequal, hut there are none

whom a

in

who

regular series of proportionate sounds

CHAPTER

3

The Reverses of Time: The Origin and History of the Distinction between Verse

Modern poetry. critic,

but

I

often distinguish “verse” from

he nuances of this distinction

its

significance

position that, tal

critics ofliterature

is

fairly constant.

though metrically

and Poetry

may

vary from

critic to

“Verse” indicates com-

proficient, lacks

more fundamen-

properties of poetic art. “Poetry,” in contrast, indicates writ-

ing that, though possibly deficient in conventional versification, nevertheless possesses essential aesthetic qualities absent from a

> >

verse.

To which

clarify this distinction at the outset it is

put by

and

modern and contemporary

to indicate uses to

critics,

one may

109

cite

MISSING MEASURES several cases of

opens

on Rudyard Kipling by asking “whether Kipling’s verse poetry,” and he subsequently suggests that most of Kip-

his essay really

practical application. Eliot, for instance,

its

is

ling’s verse

is

not poetry, since

among

represents,

it

other things,

“craft” rather than “art” (OPP, 228, 235). In his Purity of Diction

Donald Davie

in English Verse,

meaning by

this latter

with “diction,”

identifies “verse”

term an

restriction of

artificial

poetic

speech; he identifies “poetry,” in contrast, with a fuller and freer use of “language.” uses, he less

remarks,

Though Davie

“We

urges that “verse” has valid

cannot help feeling that verse

important and splendid than poetry,

splendid than language.”

And

1

In

one

“The

a craft

is

it

may

fact

is

that,

but not an

art.

.

much more

than technical exper-

an impressive exposition of incident or idea. In contrast-

modern

critics are partly

in

as well. So, too,

enough

round

off a verse,

if

ways and terms. For

in Satires

the Sublime

slightly flawed,

1

10

is

is

to

must have

1.4.40-44 that

it

just

concludere versum; he must display in addi-

mens

tongue of great eloquence, os magna sonaturum.

On

a poet

he wishes to be considered a poet,

tion native genius, ingenium, divine spirit,

contends in

if

will not suffice; he

Horace observes

for a writer,

voicing sentiments

Phaedrus 245A' that

produce great works, techne alone

if

is

readers of different eras and tastes have shared.

example, Socrates argues

to

it

respect, the verse-poetry distinction incorporates a feel-

that earlier critics have expressed in different

not

to the

half-hearted desire for beauty. Verse clings

a

ing verse and poetry,

is

art but not

involves a richness of feeling, a startling justness of percep-

tion, or

mania

an

Committed

.

.

is

be, verse betrays, by the very fact that

Fine poetry involves something tise. It

where poetry

of poetry as a prelate clings to a mistress.”

many

ing that

an essay on

of Kipling and of “art” and

an impotent,

to the form

in

Eliot’s discussion

notional though verse,

Calvin Bedient,

less

is

part of this sentence and, per-

“craft,” elaborates: a craft, verse

just as diction

first

Davie, approvingly cites the

haps recalling

somehow

is

to

33-36

divina,

and

a

And “Longinus”

that greatness

(

megethos ), even

be preferred to mere correctness ( aptaistos ).

1

THE REVERSES OF TIME In other respects,

verse

and poetry

however, the modern distinction between

differs significantly

the idea that fine poetry requires earlier critics

from

earlier formulations

more than technique. To be

of

sure,

argue that great poetry involves qualities attribut-

able only to inspiration. Yet they argue as well that such qualities are compatible with and indeed require the support of con-

—

—

ventional craft and metrical technique.

Modern

critics, in

con-

sometimes use the verse-poetry distinction to depreciate traditional versification and to elevate free verse" over verse trast,

'

composed

who

meter.

in

suggests that

As we shall see, poems written

this in

is

especially true of Eliot,

conventional meters and

stanzas are less admirable than cult" structural properties

poems which embody more “diffiand which thereby “revolutionize” the

art of poetry.

Because the verse-poetry distinction has significantly contributed to the distrust of meter characteristic of poetic theory and

we might well attempt to determine how the distinction originated and how it assumed its present function. Tracing this distinction seems especially needful now, since many practice in our time,

poets and critics today appear to believe not only that the distinction

embodies

a self-evident

truth, but also that writers have

always subscribed to the distinction.

The

distinction

ever, are to be

is

found

did not acquire

its

foreign to ancient criticism. in several ancient texts.

sources,

how-

Moreover, though

it

current meaning until recently, the distinction

was formed and focussed the recovery

Its

wake of

in the sixteenth century. In the

and diffusion of the

Poetics at that time, Aristotle’s

remarks about imitation were debated with reference to the question of whether it was legitimate to use prose as a medium for fiction.

During

this debate, his

remarks were combined and “har-

monized” with observations of other ancient

authorities. In con-

sequence, there arose a clear distinction between verse and poetry, a distinction

which did not

which emerged

as a result

exist in

any of the ancient

texts,

but

of their conflation.

Overall, the distinction between verse and poetry involves the

1

1

2

MISSING MEASURES transformation of the ancient idea that poetry than meter into the

modern

is

something more

may

idea that poetry

be something

other than or even opposed to meter. In a related sense, the verse-

poetry distinction reflects a difference between earlier literature

and the

our time. In earlier periods, there

literature of

abundance

of metrical composition, not all of

poetry. In our time, there

considered poetry,

/.

much

is

an

considered

an abundance of composition that

is

of

which

is

which

is

is

not in meter.

The Ancient Sources of the Modern Distinction

If

“poetry,”

the

Greeks do not distinguish between “verse” and

it is

partly because the terms are not, strictly speaking,

Greek. “Verse” derives from the

classical

though “poetry” evidently derives from

Latin, versus.

poietria, in ancient

And

Greek

word is simply the feminine of poietes, “poet” or “maker,” and means (as it later means in Latin) “poetess.” Not until the Middle the

Ages does poetria indicate poetic writing

modern term “poetry” words imply not

When

just

is

in general.

Though our

suggested by poiesis and poietd{e, the

poetry but productive activity at larged

the Greeks refer to “verse,” they use the term metron,

sometimes combining

it

with poiema,

poiesis,

or poietes, in for-

mulations like “in the meter of poems,” ton meta metrou poiema ton (Isocrates, Antidosis, 45).' in

speaking of choric and

The Greeks

lyric verse

companiment and arranged by

also use the

term melos

designed for musical ac-

strophic pattern rather than by a

single repeating unit like the hexameter. Metron, in addition to

denoting poetic verses, more broadly imports “measure,” a with which Aristophanes has fun

in

fact

The Clouds 635ft where

Socrates endeavors to explain prosody to the farmer Strepsiades,

who cial

can grasp

exchange.

1

1

its

terms only

in relation to

measures of commer-

THE REVERSES OF TIME one sense, poetry

In

“All poetry (poiesin )

I

Greeks metrical composition. consider and define as words having metre for the

is

{logo?}

echonta metron ),” Gorgias

state

without metre (emeu metrou ) for

it

says Socrates (Republic, 3930),

phrase ol Iliad

1. 1

comments

9)/’ “I

will

not a poet (poieti^os ),”

while introducing a prose para-

2-42. “|PJrose must have rhythm (rhythmon),

but not meter (metron), otherwise

remarks Aristotle

am

I

(Helen,

it

will be a

poem poiema ),” (

prose rhythm (Rhetoric,

in his discussion of

should be added that the ability to compose in meter is, for the Greeks, more than a technical acquirement, for meter is

3.8.2).

itself

It

intimately connected with poetic inspiration. Indeed, one of

the signs of enthousiasmos or mania

is

the gift of speaking in

measure. Even before Pythagoras’ discovery of the arithmetic relationship between the intervals of the musical scale, the sico-poetical arts are associated with

mu-

number and harmony, and

and musicians are believed to receive from the muses the measures that they embody. What is more, measure poets, rhapsodes,

indicates an order of spirit inspired in the poet by the

muses.

When,

for instance,

for “the perfect

and

in his

Hymn

petitions

measure (metron) of amiable wisdom,”

asking for aid not simply a fullness

Solon

in perfecting his

poem, but

him

intelligence of spirit to guide

Yet the Greek view of poetry

is

Gerald

dual. If the

early history of this term

is

he

is

achieving

Greeks regard it

as mimesis,

not clear, though

Else has provided a remarkable analysis of the available

F.

evidence.

The

in

'

in life.

poetry as metrical composition, they also regard imitation.

muse or the muse

1

I

he earliest meaning of the word

mim- root, which

is

apparently sug-

“miming” and “impersonation.” In time, however, the word acquired a variety of complex associations. When used in connection with poetry, the word eventually came to indicate imitation of human action (praxis). gested by the

This concept seems

to

indicates

have developed

in large part as a re-

sponse to the triumph of dramatic literature fourth century,

b.c. It is

Plato

who

in the fifth

gives this concept

and ea rly

its

essential

formulation, though he was distrustful of mimetic qualities in

"3

MISSING MEASURES poetry and disturbed by the vogue of dramatic literature in his

nowhere urges

day. Plato

that all poetry

human

however, that the representation of

much

poetic art.

In

hook

the third

of

He

mimetic.

is

action

stresses,

central to

is

he uses

the Republic,

(392D-98B) the concept of imitation as a device to classify the three

major types

of poetry:

pure imitation

drama,

(i.e.,

which the

in

characters and chorus in the play entirely carry the discourse);

mixed imitation-and-narration sometimes engage

in

(i.e.,

epic, in

which the characters

dialogue with each other, while

at

other

times the author himself speaks of events that befall and thoughts that occur to his characters); of

dithyramhic and

and pure narration

lyric verse, in

(i.e.,

a

which the author

wide range directly ad-

dresses, so to speak, his or her audience).

As

is

often pointed out, Plato believed that the

the poetry, the its

more harmful

audience; thus,

itative

in the

its

intellectual

more

and moral

imitative effect

on

tenth book of the Republic, purely im-

and imitative-narrative poets are provisionally banished

from the

ideal state. Yet, in identifying imitation as the central

feature of

much

poetry and in classifying different types of poetry

according to the extent to which they are mimetic, Plato suggests a discrimination

between the

poet’s metrical

and mimetic

functions."

Developing the terms of this

tion

Plato’s discussion, Aristotle

makes

discrimination explicit in his Poetics. Aristotle regards imita-

more

positively than Plato had,

and

in fact inverts Plato’s

conclusions so as to elevate tragedy over

And

genres.

Aristotle says in

less

two key passages

imitative poetic that the

mimetic

more characteristic of poetry than is its metrical element. Our modern distinction between verse and poetry ulti-

element

is

mately derives from these passages.

The Poetics’

passages are well

known.

In the

first,

opening chapter, Aristotle objects

which appears

to the

in the

custom of defin-

ing poets with respect to their meters (and of calling anyone writes in hexameters an “epic” poet, or anyone

114

who

who

writes in

THE REVERSES OF TIME elegiac couplets an “elegiac” one) rather than with respect to their

mimetic function. Speaking of the term “poet,” Aristotle observes: {PJeople

do

link

up

poetic composition with verse {metro)

of "elegiac poets,” "epic poets,” not treating

them

and speak

as poets hy virtue of

mtmesin ), hut employing the term appellation going along with the use of verse {metron).

as a

common

And

in fact the

name

scientific topic

their imitation

(

also applied to

is

in verses {metron), yet in

common except

one

is

"poet'

{

anyone

who treats a

medical or

Homer and Empedocles actually

their verse ( metron );

hence the proper term for the

poieten ), for the other "science-writer" {physiologon).' 1 (

The second

,

447bi3-2°)

passage occurs in the Poetics' ninth chapter, where

Aristotle distinguishes

Thus

have nothing

between history and poetry:

the difference between the historian

and the poet

is

not in their

utterances being in verse or prose {emmetra legein e ametra)

be quite possible for Herodotus' {metra),

and

without

it);

it

would not be any

the difference

lies in

work

(it

would

to be translated into verse

the less a history with verse than

it is

the fact that the historian speaks of

what has happened, the poet of the kind of thing that can happen. Hence also poetry is a more philosophical and serious business than history; for poetry speaks

"Universal”

in this case

is

more of universals, history of particulars. what kind of person is likely to do or say

certain kinds of things, according to probability or necessity. (145 1338 — b5)

Before proceeding, totle’s

own

we should

intentions in these

establish, as far as possible, Aris-

two

passages. In the

first,

he

is

in

part attempting to clarify the subject matter proper to poetry.

This issue was confused

in

his day, primarily

because of the

existence of a vast body of didactic literature in verse. versified

cosmology

(e.g.,

Parmenides), moral philosophy

Theognis), political science (e.g.,

Solon), martial

(e.g.,

Tyrtaeus), agricultural science

(e.g., Aristotle’s

own

There was

pupil Menon).

(e.g.,

(e.g.,

exhortation

Hesiod), and medicine

The popular

practice of iden-

MISSING MEASURES tifying poets with the verse

confused the

measure

in

which they wrote further

we must remember

issue. In this regard,

though the popular view always tends meter, the identification in

is

more

that al-

with

to identify poetry

specific in

Greek

literature than

English literature, for the reason that Greek poets often con-

centrate on one poetic genre instance,

Theognis

the term

is

the

is

and one type

of verse.

When,

for

referred to as elegeiopoios, “an elegiac poet,''

a literal indication of the

hexameter-and-pentameter

— —

meter

distich

in

the elegiac couplet,

which

Theognis

writes.

revealed in his choice of Empedocles to

aim

is

trate poetry that

is

Aristotle’s

Empedocles.

illus-

not truly poetic. Aristotle greatly admires

Homer and

Plato are the only authors Aristotle cites

more frequently, and, in a surviving fragment of the lost dialogue On Poets (Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 8.2.3), a £ a n compares Empedocles to Homer, but this time in order to praise him: “Empedocles was a man of Homeric genius, and endowed with great power of language, and a great master of metaphor, and a man who had employed all the successful artifices of poetry.’’ i

Aristotle does not apply to Empedocles, as will sixteenth-century

commentators, calls

disparaging term such as “versifier.”

a

Empedocles

Empedocles not

importance

if

to belittle

him but

to

of imitation. In essence, Aristotle

that even a writer as gifted as

complete poet

simply

a “science-writer,” a physiologos. In other words,

Aristotle mentions size the

He

empha-

is

saying

Empedocles cannot be considered

a

he does not imitate.

If Aristotle contrasts

Empedocles with Homer

to clarify the

subject matter proper to poetry, he contrasts history with poetry for a similar reason: to explain the

unique

capabilities of poetry as

an imitative art and to explain the functions that

it

which no other

for Aristotle

intellectual discipline can. History

an especially illuminating later

antiquity, these

chronicle

1

human

16

foil to

two

experience

arts

is

can

fulfill

poetry because in his time, and in

— both

— were

of

which examine and

closely associated,

and

it

was

THE REVERSES OF TIME

commonly suggested

that the metricality of poetry

and the non-

metricality of history constituted their chief difference.

view when, discussing the origins of

illustrates this

writing, he remarks

(

Geography

1.2.6):

,

1

Strabo

*

historical

“[PJoetry, as an art,

first

came upon the scene and was first to win approval. Then came Cadmus, Pherecydes, Hecataeus, and their followers, with prose writings in which they imitated the poetic art, abandoning the use of

metre metron but (

'

poetry.

other respects preserving the qualities of

14

In a related fashion, Quintilian calls (10. 1.3

quodammodo carmen echoing the speaks

in

)

(

solutum, “in a certain

common

How to

term

way

1)

history

a prose

poem,”

for “prose,” oratio soluta;

Write History

some

8) of

and Lucian

types of historical writing

as peze poietik^e, “prose poetry.”"

Yet the key difference between poetry and history totle insists, that the

that poetry poetry’s

source of

is

is

metrical and the other

not tied to the particularities of

freedom its

one

in this respect

not.

It is

literal fact.

rather

Indeed,

according to Aristotle, the

is,

greatest value as an art.

is

not, Aris-

is

Though

he never claims that

poetry has access to absolute truth, he believes that poetry can present a vision of necessity.”

life

informed by

Expanding the concept

mere copying

development

(a

about visual art

in Sophist

a sense of “probability or

of mimesis

that Plato anticipates in

poet can present a story which has is

free

terize history.

He

knit together.

The

is,

in Aristotle’s

a single period,

all

from the random can

tell

of

remarks

234B-36C), Aristotle urges that poetic

imitation can comprehensively illuminate

but which

beyond the idea

experience.

A

the vividness of real events, qualities that often charac-

a story in

historian,

human

which events are plausibly

on the other hand,

words (1459322-24), “not

tells a

story

which

of a single action but of

including everything that happened during that

time to individuals or groups

—

of

which events each has only

chance relationships to the others.”

This idea underlies Aristotle’s repeated insistence that should not construct his drama or epic

in the

manner

a poet

of a histo-

U7

MISSING MEASURES

which

complete

is

Homer

should focus, as

rian, hut rather

in

itself

does, on a single action

and which has

a

logically related

beginning, middle, and end. This idea also underlies Aristotle’s

argument

that plot

the most important element in tragedy

is

contention (145 11127-29) that

his

“it

is

and

evident that the poet

should he a maker of his plots ( mython ) more than of his verses (

metron ), insofar as he

is

and what he imitates

esin)

hy virtue of his imitations ( tnim -

a poet is

actions ( praxeis ).” For

a coherent plot, a plot depicting

and

effects, that the poet

typology

of,

human

—

to

most able

action in terms of causes

to reveal

an order

in,

or a

experience.

Herodotus

Aristotle chooses

dides

is

human

by creating

it is

—

as

opposed,

Thucy-

to

say,

exemplify history for the reason that his Histories are

the most poetic of

character of

much

(Aristotle cites

all

historical writings, both in the fabulous

work and

of the

Herodotus not only

Poetics, in his contrast

twenty-third chapter

in its

engrossing narrative.

in the

ninth chapter of the

between poetry and

in a

more

history, hut also in the

specific contrast

between epic and

history.

On

and

Herodotus’ statement that the Sicilian victory over the

to

this latter occasion, Aristotle refers to Histories 7.167

Carthaginians and the Greek victory over the Persians

were

totle’s

Salamis

on the same day. These events had no

said to have occurred

causal relationship,

at

and the recording of them

typifies, in Aris-

opinion, the inevitably jumbled and haphazard elements of

historical reporting.) Aristotle

understands perfectly

might think that the only reason Herodotus does not write in meter,

Empedocles Hut the fulfills

is

just as

commonly thought

is

unified

is

should

He

why

makes an and which is

of a poet. Neither in itself 1

"

causality.

stress that Aristotle

not an integral part of poetry.

that he

that neither of these writers

and complete

governed hy narrative or dramatic

One

is

to be a poet because he does.

most important function

imitation which

not a poet

people

he understands perfectly

real point, Aristotle argues,

the

is

why

never suggests that meter

is

does not say, as will sixteenth-

— the reverses of time century students of the

would not be

Poetics,

that if a versified

poetic, a prosified Sophocles or

Herodotus

Homer would

be.

Aristotle emphasizes the importance of meter at various points in the Poetics (e.g., 1449a 2-28; I4 49 b2 4 -3i). Though he does speak in the treatises first chapter about nonmetncal imitations

such as

mime and

Socratic dialogue, referring (1447328-29) to

the term logois

psilois,

“speeches bare (of music],” he

juncture discussing imitation

music, dancing, and the

like.

in general,

In

his discussion

he drops entirely the issue of prose

addition, Diogenes Laertius records the

focussed remark which Aristotle evidently Socratic dialogues, “Aristotle says that the

made about form of

writings was in between poetry and prose,”

would seem

at this

is

including instrumental

Once he embarks on

of poetic imitation specifically,

imitations.

them with

1

and

more Plato’s

his [Plato’s] this

remark

to indicate that Aristotle did not intend to assert that

dialogues were poetry, at least not in the Lastly, as has been noted, in the third

full

book of

sense of the word. his Rhetoric, Aris-

totle identifies

general rhythmical arrangement with prose and the specific rhythmical arrangement of meter with poetry.

A

final point to

make about

the Poetics

is

that

incomplete.

it is

What survives is mostly devoted to Tragedy; a second book on Comedy was evidently lost early in the text’s history. Moreover, 18

the Poetics

is

incomplete

in the sense that Aristotle

ignore a good deal of poetic

art.

Early

appears to

in his treatise

(1448319-24), he adopts Plato’s tripartite scheme of poetic types and acknowledges the lyric forms by implication. However, Aristotle’s subse-

quent insistence on the preeminence of dramatic imitation his insistence that poetic imitation

leaves the status of lyric verse

is

imitation of

human

ambiguous. Admittedly,

— and

action all

Greek

genres endeavored to be dramatic to some degree. Even so, one has difficulty applying Aristotle’s analysis as broadly as he seems to

have intended

it

to be applied. In other

poets and indicates an appreciation of the Poetics or the dialogue

On

Poets

works, he refers to

lyric.

lyric

The second book of

may have

explained this

119

MISSING MEASURES

As things

discrepancy.

stand, Aristotle’s treatise

defense of fiction, especially drama. But there

which

it

wonderful

a

much

is

poetry for

cannot account.

This situation been

is

the

lost to

When

significant.

is

West

the Poetics, after having

hundred

for nearly eighteen

was

years,

recovered in the Renaissance, Aristotle’s ideas on poetry, however stimulating, were not fully suited to a literary environment in

sonnet and expository or allegorical

which short forms

like the

poems

Dante, Fracastoro, and Spenser figure promi-

like those of

nently.

one

It is

of the curiosities of literary history

not one of the happier curiosities

—

that the Poetics should have

had so

little

much

authority in a literary culture

circulation in the literary culture

preferences

Though tion

match the terms

ill

it

whose

addressed and so

and

poetic forms

of Aristotle’s discussion.

Aristotle does not, in a verbal sense, suggest distinc-

between verse and poetry, Quintilian makes

foreshadows the distinction. This remark appears

remark

a

that

in the Institutes,

course of Quintilian’s survey (10.1.46- 131)0! ancient litera-

in the

ture. Quintilian discusses

hexameter

(1)

— and maybe

matic poets,

Greek authors

and

poets, (2) elegiac, iambic,

(4) historians, (5) orators,

then addresses Latin writers

Roman hexameter

poets, he

first,

and

same

in the

taking up in turn:

lyric poets, (3)

(6)

philosophers.

order.

awards top honors

dra-

He

With regard

to Virgil

to

and then

devotes a paragraph to a consideration of runners-up:

I

must keep

With

to the

us Virgil-

same order

— like

Homer

in

Roman Greeks may

dealing with

with the

most auspicious opening; indeed, of

all

—

writers also.

provide the

poets of that genre in either

Homer.

And

language he undoubtedly comes nearest

to

we make up by

Virgil’s

level for the inferiority

champion shows

to

I

that

is

1

found

worth reading

—

to follow far behind.

20

is

.

perhaps

our

Macer and Lu-

hut not for any ability to provide the style

the stuff of eloquence; each

hut the one

.

lomer’s heights.

All the rest will be cretius are

good general

.

shows elegance on

unambitious, the other

difficult.

his

own

subject,

Varro Atacinus made

,

the reverses of time his

name

as a translator of another’s

work; he

is not to be despised, hardly rich enough to increase an orator’s powers. Ennius we must venerate as we do groves whose age makes them holy, full of great oaks that nowadays have less beauty than sanctity. Others are

but he

is

closer to us,

and more useful

for the matter in question.

frivolous in his hexameters as elsewhere: he his

own

talents, hut deserves praise in parts.

though

a better versifier

than poet

War

his Sicilian

to the

too

much

in love

is

as

with

Cornelius Severus, even

( versificator

could lay good claim to the second place

completed

is

Ovid

if (as

quam

poeta melior ),

has been said) he had

standard of his

book. |There

first

comments about poets whose works are largely lost, and then Quintilian mentions Lucan and his unfinished historical epic, the socalled Phaisalia, about the war between Caesar and Pompey.J follow

Lucan

passionate, spirited, full of brilliant thoughts: indeed, to be frank, a better model for orators than poets magis oratoribus is

quam

(

poetis imitandus).

(10.1.85-90)

as

19

The key matter is Quintilian’s remark about Severus, though, we will see, scarcely less crucial is the comment about Lucan;

and the whole passage

when he speaks

And what

of

does he

There are no

is

Severus as being

mean

clear

poem on

it,

the Civil

does Quintilian

a better versifier

mean

than a poet?

"

to these questions. Versificator

is

a

Quintilian seems to be the earliest no-

and he uses

War

What

by the term versificator?

answers

post-Augustan coinage. table writer to use

significant.

it

just this once.

Because Severus’

survives in fragments only,

find in his writing a clue to Quintilian’s

appears censorious. Yet Severus

is

in

it

meaning.

hard

is

It

to

initially

good company, and having

applied the term to him, Quintilian proceeds to rate his talents highly. Furthermore, other distinguished judges also praise Severus.

Ovid,

(4.2),

cites

who

dedicates to Severus one of the Blacky Sea Epistles

expresses considerable esteem for his work. Seneca the Elder

Suasonae

6.26-27) Severus’ lines on Cicero’s death as models of eloquent lamentation. (

Quintilian

may have

in

mind

the

Greek term

poietes,

121

and he

MISSING MEASURES

“maker," with the verb

may make

tilian

“to

meaning

be connecting by implication the noun poeta,

may

facere, “to

>

verses" (versus /facio

the sense in is,

which Quintilian

versificare:

was

is

less

disparagement

it

hence “maker of

excellent as a

maker

would seem misguided

in Quintilian’s

1011-12),

1

versificator

in

an epic or

of

to see strong

remark.

Furthermore, for subsequent ancient writers 6.9.2~5; Terentianus Maurus,

“maker"

measuring him against Virgil

as a poeta epicus or poeta herous, “a

heroic poem." In any case,

ters,

Quin-

be indicating that Severus excelled in his specific ability

verses,” versificator ), but that he

this

In other words,

make."

Of Letters,

Syllables, Feet,

means simply “writer

justin,

(e.g.,

and Me-

of verses.”

It is

only in the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance that the contrast that

Quintilian draws between the versifier and poet ac-

quires great pejorative force; and

it is

only when, in the sixteenth

com-

century, Quintilian’s remarks are conflated with Aristotle’s

ments about Empedocles and history that clear

and pointed

definition.

The

be rendered as follows: “a writer fails to

imitate

and thus

versificator also retains, into

meaning

neutral

which emerged may

definition

who composes

not a real poet."

is

modern

we

from Quintilian’s discussion

of epic.

It

verses, hut

who

should he added that

times, the vaguer

of “writer of verses," as

third section of this chapter,

acquires a

versificator

we

will see

and more

when,

in the

look at Dryden’s appropriations

Setting aside the question of Quintilian’s intention in using the

word

versificator,

we should

note that Quintilian

the term, indicating that he feels verse

less

is

is

not, in using

than essential to

poetry. Indeed, the ninth

hook

of Aristotle’s Rhetoric,

is

based on the idea that poetry

and prose rhythmical.

And though

that he, like Aristotle, expects

Quintilian did not

know

of the Institutes, like the third

Quintilian’s

more

the Poetics

in

metrical

remark indicates

of poetry than

and

is

book

meter alone,

no way

reflects the

Aristotelian belief that poetry ought to he mimetic. In fact, in his

survey Quintilian does exactly the thing to which Aristotle objects

1

22

THE REVERSES OF TIME in the first

chapter of the

Quintilian classifies poets ac-

Poetics.

cording to the verse measure

in

which they

write, a classification

that results in a hexametric philosophical writer like Lucretius

and hexametric historical writers like Severus and Lucan being grouped with Virgil, who is at least in the Aeneid and certain of the

Eclogues

—

—

a

genuine “poet-imitator”

in

the

Aristotelian

sense.

Furthermore, when Quintilian

refers, in Institutes 1.4.4, specif-

Empedocles’ poetry, he makes clear that he assumes that philosophical material is legitimately poetic and that Empedocles ically to

a legitimate poet.

Discussing the importance of giving students a broad literary education, Quintilian urges: “Nor can such trainis

ing be regarded as complete

if

it

stop short of music, for the

teacher of literature has to speak of metre and rhythm. rance of philosophy is an equal drawback, since there are .

ous passages

.

.

Igno-

numer-

poem based on the most intricate questions of natural philosophy, while among the Greeks we have Empedocles and among our poets Varro and Lucretius, all of

whom

in

almost every

have expounded their philosophy

in verse

(

praecepta sa-

pientiae versibus tradiderunt ).”

Yet sixteenth-century readers will look to Quintilian for illumination about Aristotle’s remarks in the first and ninth chapter of the Poetics,

recognize

—

and they

will look to Quintilian

as does, for instance,

translation of the Poetics

—

do

this.

Though

And

when

Lodovico Castelvetro

that Aristotle

different views of Empedocles.

even

there

is

in

they his

and Quintilian take a reason readers will

Quintilian assumes positions diametrically op-

posed to Aristotle’s, Quintilian’s argument looks, from a certain angle, analogous to Aristotle’s. Quintilian appears to be doing, in

an orderly fashion, for Latin hexameter poets what Aristotle does, in a

more

Greek hexameter poets. Furtherof the two arguments are strikingly alike.

elliptical fashion, for

more, the steps

In effect, Aristotle says: In

poet

is

Homer.

hexameter

verse,

In effect, Quintilian says: In

our genuine great

hexameter

verse,

I2 3

our

MISSING MEASURES genuine great poet

hexameter

Virgil. Aristotle suggests: In

is

verse, the lesser poets are

Empedocles and hexametrified Hero-

dotus (hexameter would have been the measure for Herodotus

had he worked

i459h32-6oa37

MISSING MEASURES had

Aristotle

used the term versificator

in effect

speaking of

in

Empedocles:

Was Lucan this,

and object

history. (

a poet? Surely he was.

is

usual, the

differ

from Livy, and the difference

the property of the poet.

Aristotle exercised this censure that those |

poets) so severely that he

would

who

pedocles,

To

poetically

wrote"

feigned not at

.

.

verse

is

Moreover, although

.

who do

refuse the

pure

a

name

not imitate are not

of poet to versifiers

he speaks differently, and says: “As

(versifica tores), yet in practice

Empedocles

grammarians deny

now! Produce

that he wrote history. Well

Lucan must

versu ). Verse

As

all

(cot;

enoirioev) so he even calls

a poet (noirycfiv). 4

Em-

'

appreciate better the conflation of Quintilian and Plutarch

and Servius with distinction

Aristotle,

and

to appreciate better

how

between verse and poetry originated, we should

the second-level or imperfect poets

whom

list

the relevant four an-

though we need not include

cient critics mention,

the

all

the poets

mentioned by Quintilian, but simply those known by sixteenthcentury readers. All these second-level figures are,

borne

in

mind, hexameter

(and at times Ovid),

mind

be borne in tilian’s

who

poets, with the exception of

wrote

in elegiac couplets.

that because Severus’ epic

versificator

remark had thus

lost

to historical poets, but also to

works were also

how

in

general

criticisms of

felt to

Poetics’ ninth chapter. Finally,

to

Theognis

should also

anchor of

specific

remark not only

to

hexametric poets whose

be deficient.

Lucan seem

It

should be

had vanished, Quin-

its

reference. Therefore, readers applied the

Lucan and

it

We

should remember

confirm observations

we should

note

how

in the

Aristotle’s

general proscription of scientific/philosophical and historical poetry appears to receive detailed confirmation in the cited by Quintilian

names

and Plutarch and special-case confirmation

the Servian dismissal of Lucan: Aristotle

Quintilian

Plutarch

Servius

Lucan

Empedocles

Lucretius

Empedocles

Herodotus

Lucan

Parmenides

in

hexameters

J

38

of poets in

the reverses of time Quintilian

Plutarch

Sevcrus

Theognis

Varro Atacinus

Nicandcr

Ovid Sixteenth-century commentators, interpreting Aristotle’s remarks about imitation, customarily illustrate their interpretations

by referring to a mixture of ancient authors

in this table.

They

occasionally supplement the mixture with references to other relevant ancient non-imitators like Manihus and Silius Italicus

and relevant modern non-imitators This

Dante and Fracastoro.

like

not to say that, in every case of this sort, the

is

commentator

has at his fingertips the ancient sources and the examples they cited. In

some

instances,

commentators appear merely

the harmonization of Aristotle, Plutarch, Quintilian, as the cliche

monplace

When,

had become and

it

illustrations

for

of

to avail

and then goes on

versificaton bassi

& inettissimi,

in his

On True

and Lucan from

to distinguish

poets and “lowly and inept versifiers, or to put (

and Servius

it.

Poetry of 1555, excludes Empedocles, Lucretius,

metricians

adopt

themselves of the com-

example, Giovanni Pietro Capriano,

the ranks of poeti perfetti

to

it

between

better,

simple

o per meglio dire, met-

nci semplictssimi )f one can see, from the authors cited as well as

from the vocabulary,

Capriano has mixed Aristotle with Quintilian, even though Capriano cites Aristotle alone in defense that

of his judgment.

Something similar occurs

Antonio Minturno’s 1564 Art of

in

Poetry dialogue: I

shall

never affirm that there

is

epic poetry in these

works Minturno |

says to his friend Vespasiano, referring to the Metamorphoses Fasti ics

1

and the 45 1 a

1

lost

6ff.

were Homer’s

non-Homeric

for being linear epics,

be called poets?

I

by

epics that Aristotle criticizes in Poet-

and episodic rather than

a single action);

will explain to you.

people attribute the

name

to

and the

all

why

It is

those

unified, as

then are their authors to

both because the

who

common

write in verse, whether

they treat of agriculture, as Vergil in the Georgies] and Hesiod, or of |

!

39

^

MISSING MEASURES and Pontanus, or

astrology, as Aratus, Manilius,

Nicander, or of things done Italicus,

in

war, as Quintus Calaber,

Minturno does not mention

him

one

1

.

Silius

.

'

Aristotle (though his friend has

feels its

is

aware

of this

men-

nor does he directly

earlier), Quintilian, or Plutarch,

echo Servius. But once one als,

.

and Lucan, and because they adorn them with poetic splen-

dors and add to them things feigned.

tioned

of medicine, as

nexus of source materi-

presence here as clearly as one does in writers

who

explicitly cite the sources.

He

Philip Sidney deserves special mention here.

most interesting sixteenth-century writers

and

Poetics,

same

his Apologie for Poetrie of 1583

one

is

of the

make use of contains many of to

the

the

interpretations of the treatise that are found elsewhere in the

period. For example,

when

he says, “Poesie therefore

imitation, for so Aristotle termeth

then excludes from the

Lucan (among

others),

number

it

of

in his

'right

there

is

an additional element

in

an arte

of

word Mimesis"** and Poets’’ Lucretius and

one can see that Sidney

definition with an idea ultimately derived

is

is

fusing Aristotle’s

from Quintilian. Yet

Sidney that requires comment.

For, having cited Aristotle’s definition of poetry as an art of imitation, Sidney goes

on

to discuss the

popular custom of identi-

fying poets with “the sorts of verses they liked best to write in

and,

in the

”;

course of this discussion, he remarks:

|Ijndeede the greatest part of Poets have apparelled their poeticall inventions in that

numbrous kinde

of writing

which

is

called verse:

indeed hut apparelled, verse being hut an ornament and no cause to

many most excellent Poets that never versified, and now swarme many versifiers that neede never aunswere to the name of Poets. Poetry, sith there have beene

An totle’s

important feature of these remarks

is

that in fusing Aris-

idea with Quintilian’s terminology, Sidney does

urge that not

all

who

“verse being hut an gives, briefly

140

and

write verse are poets.

ornament and no cause

explicitly, a distinction

He

more than

also speaks of

to Poetry.”

Sidney

between “verse” and

THE REVERSES OF TIME

The

“Poetry."

distinction

is

not a contrast, as

will

it

become

in

later writers like Eliot.

But the distinction has been made. Sidney does something else. Thinking of authors of prose romances like Heliodorus and of Xenophon’s fictional-historical

some who have never written verse are "many most excellent Poets never ver-

Cyropedia, he states that

nevertheless poets:

.

.

.

And

he later reinforces this statement by remarking: “It is already sayde (and, as think, trulie sayde) it is not ryming and sified."

I

versing that

and

a versifier

This

last

of Aristotle, in I

maketh

Poesie.

One may

without Poetry.’’

bee

Poet without versing,

a

46

idea

commonly appears

and

it is

in

sixteenth-century readers

in fact often attributed to

him. For instance,

discussing the ninth chapter of the Poetics, Castelvetro glosses

45 I bt

—

in verse

saying: “[ J Just as the history of

4

would remain

hand the

history, not

become

Herodotus composed

poetry, so on the other

Electra of Sophocles, put into prose,

would remain

poetry, not diverge into history.” (/ Cjome Piston d’Erodoto composta in verso resta istoria, ne diviene poesia, cost dall’altra parte l

Elettra di Sofocle, se fosse composta in prosa, resterebbe poesia, ne

Not surprisingly, in his next sentence Casbrings Lucan into the discussion: “And therefore one,

diverrebbe istoria .) telvetro

may

proceeding further,

say

that

Lucan,

Silius

and

Italicus,

Girolamo Fracastoro in his Joseph are historians. And by the same token, Lucian in many of his Dialogues, and Boccaccio in his Decameron and Filopono, are poets." .

.

.

4

In the

same way, one of the characters

in

Lopez’s dialogue

observes with respect to Poetics 145 1 b 1 —4: “(IJf the

dotus were put into meter, and that of

Homer

work of Hero-

into prose,

one

could not for that reason say that the one was a poet and the other a historian.

de

Homero

histonco.)

that

obra de Herodoto se pusiesse en metro, y la en prosa, no por esso dexaria de ser este poeta y auqel (/SJi la

T hen another character (Lopez himself

"many

excellent"

parecen

(

Italian

tambien

muy

bien ).

comedies las

in

prose are

actually)

adds

poems and seem very

comedias italianas en prosa son poemas y

4H

141

MISSING MEASURES Advocates of imitation tend ultimately imitation

is

tion

is

is

argue that though

and though poetry can

the essence of poetry,

without verse, the best poetry

to

exist

imitation with verse. This posi-

represented alike by Castelvetro, Sidney, and Lopez.

Having suggested that that the Decameron is

would

a prose Electra

poetry, Castelvetro quickly adds that al-

though “verse and prose do not constitute the

between poetry and

be poetry and

still

essential difference

history, nevertheless verse

adorns poetry, and prose history, as their most

accompanies and fitting

vestments.

Neither can history without censure don verse, nor poetry don prose than can a of

women.”

49

woman don men

Sidney uses

s

a similar

point. After arguing that verse

is

men the clothing metaphor to make the same

clothing or

“no cause

he says that

to Poetry,”

nevertheless “the Senate of Poets have chosen verse as their

rayment, meaning, as to

in

matter they passed

all in all,

so in

goe beyond them: not speaking (table talke fashion, or dreame,) words as they chanceably

in a

peyzing weighing] each |

sillable of

fall

maner

like

men

from the mouth, but

each wortle by

according to the dignitie of the subiect.”

fittest

iust

proportion

"

Lopez’s dialogue supplies a good general statement of this line of reasoning. Just after Lopez asserts that some Italian prose

comedies are poems, the character of Fadrique, defers

and whose opinions are presented

weight than Lopez’s, puts that,

in a qualification.

according to Horace (scarcely

Aristotle), the

aim

of poetry

meter contributes so greatly

is

less

to

whom

Lopez

as carrying greater

Fadrique points out

authoritative a figure than

delightful teaching;

to delight, the poet

and because

should write in

it.

Fadrique also makes the point that Aristotle simply says

in dis-

cussing tragic plot in Poetics

a poet

more

so for plot

145^27-29,

and imitation than

for

that “the poet

meter”

(

el poeta

is

mas

lo es

Jdbula y imitacion que no por el metro). Aristotle, Fadrique urges, “thus signifies that meter holds some part in Poetry, even if

por

la

not in imitation” ( adonde sigrujica que el metro tien alguna parte en la Poetica,

142

aunque no en

el imitation).

And Fadrique

concludes:

:

THE REVERSES OF TIME Meter

not necessary to the poet, hut

is

ornaments and dresses

mas es una

something which much

is

that lady called poesy

(No

es forqoso el

metro al

que ataula y orna mucho a esta dama dicha poesia), and escorts her with such fitting grace and time that there is great

poeta,

beauty

cosa

in their kinship;

and

it is

some species of seem to me a bad

certain, at least, that

Poetry cannot exist without meter; and

it

does not

idea to call imitation with meter perfect poetry

and imitation without

meter and meter without imitation imperfect poetries

mal que a

ciera

la

(y

no

me pare-

imitacion con metro llamassen poesia perfecta,

imitacion sin metro y al metro sin imitacion, poeslas imperfectas ).

One

could

numerous statements

like these

second half of the sixteenth century,

telians of the

wish

cite

to establish the

primacy of imitation, while

many of whom

at the

same time

Many

use the clothing metaphor to present this compromise.

critics

employ an analogy according

)ther critics

meter

la

from Aristo-

retaining the concept of poetry as metrical composition.

(

a

y, 51

as the soul

is

to the body.

The

which imitation

to

imitation, the soul,

is

to

is

the most

important thing, but the soul, the imitation, requires a body, metrical framework,

if it is

Agnoli Segni puts

in his Considerations

it

to be appreciated

a

by mortal sense. As

of Matters Pertinent

to

Poetry [P]oetry tion

is

is its

a

composite

of imitation

body

is

body and

in

which the imita-

essence and not the verse; but not for this reason can

poetry without verse, which as a

and of verse,

necessary to

is

necessary to

man, and not

just

it

as

its

proper matter,

any body, but

a particular matter: but to the soul

and

it

to the

be

just

a particular

form corre-

sponds, in poetry, the imitation, just as the language corresponds to the body and to a certain kind of body, and not any language what-

soever but this fixed one, that in verse

The

(

is,

iorazione metrica, d fatta in vers i)

Aristotelian position that imitation

essence of poetry Platonists

made

metrical language or language

is

and not verse

frequently attacked by the Platonists.

draw ammunition

particularly

Symposium 205c and Gorgias 502c,

in

the

is

The

from passages such

which poetry

is

as

identified

M3

MISSING MEASURES with meter, and from Republic 392D-98B, tends not only that there

a

is

whole

in

which Plato con-

class of poetry

imitation, but also that this class of poetry

is

having no

superior to imitative

poetry.

Proclus also supplied Renaissance Platonists with arguments that could be deployed against Aristotelian proponents of

For Proclus, the highest

sis.

aimed

at

mime-

eschewed imitation and

sort of poetry

rendering the Ineffable and the higher truths above or

beyond the mere sensory world. In the fourth dissertation

Commentary on

Plato’s

Republic

(fifth

C.

a.d.),

of his

Proclus had rele-

gated imitative poetry to a third-class status beneath poetry dealing with divine matters and poetry dealing with moral matters. “|T|his

kind of poetry," Proclus had said of the divine and,

first

from divine inspiration,

his opinion, highest species, ‘‘proceeding

the soul with symmetry,

fills

and hence adorns even

energies with measures and rhythms.”

Because so

much

fair to

its

least

'

space has been devoted to Aristotelian argu-

ments about the importance of imitation only

in

vis-a-vis verse,

it

may

be

grant a paragraph to the Platonist side of the debate.

Giovanni Antonio Viperano evinces Platonic leanings when he writes in his Three Books on Poetry of 1579:

complete

in all its

perfectum,

&

meters,

call, as

I

“|

A| poem perfect and

Plato does, beautiful

omnibus numeris absolutum cum Platone pulchrum

Parigiuolo says at the outset ot his discussion:

deny

Aristotle’s proposition.

la

imitatione).

From

this

it

“We

shall therefore

In addition to this

prove that verse makes poetry, not imitation

non

poema

Likewise, in his Inquiry into Poetry of 1586, Lorenzo

appello

first

(

we

shall

verso fa la poesia

(il

will follow that writers of verses

without imitation are true poets, contrary to Aristotle’s deduction.”" attack

On

And

in

what

is

on Aristotelian

Poetry of

144

poetics,

and varied Renaissance

Francesco Patrizi’s encyclopedic

1586, Patrizi argues “that verse

essential to poetry that

neither be

the most extended

made

it

is

necessary for

it,

is

and

so proper

and

that poetry can

nor be without verse” {ch ’il verso

alia poesia si

THE REVERSES OF TIME proprio ed essenziale sia, che lesia necessario. farsi,

final

ne essere senza

book

of the

paragraph of the tenth and

verso). In the last

“Decade of Debate”

E che poesia non possa ne

section of his treatise, Patrizi

concludes more generally, “that the most

and those which

Aristotle,

are, as

it

ciples of his art, are not true either

origin or with respect to

its

communi,

anstotelici piu

teachings of

were, the postulated prin-

with respect to

universal

its

particular species” (che glinsegnamenti

e quei che quasi principi presupposti sono

dellarte sua poetica non sono sale,

common

veri,

ne quanto all’origine sua univer-

ne quanto a di molte spezie particolari ). 56

One

should

that imitation

make is

clear that Aristotelian critics apply the idea

the essence of poetry

and

may

that poetry

written in prose in only a restricted fashion.

The

idea

is

be

seen as

having reference only to longer forms, principally romance and drama. As was observed in the previous chapter, many regarded the

romance

as the

most

distinctive

modern contribution

to litera-

(Though there were romances written in antiquity, the romance never appears to have been considered a major genre and did not really become popular until the second or third ture.

century

a.d.)

Because romances were frequently written

in prose,

defending achievements of modern writers against those of classical writers involved, in part,

etry,” the

defending the use of prose

term meaning here simply

Not having considered drama

in

“po-

“fiction.”

in relation to the

question of

we should pause for a moment to reflect on the state dramatic literature when the Poetics (which is, after all, mainly

prose fiction, of

concerned with drama) comes into circulation. In the sixteenth century, at least in

its

earlier stages, the vernacular literatures

offered no certain and convenient

medium

to dramatists.

drama had been the way of a living

practical purposes, serious turies; there

was

little in

wrights to follow. Moreover, versification

in eclipse for

in

other genres,

it

was often

in the

felt

all

cen-

tradition for play-

vernaculars was

associated with structural rhyme, and whatever advantages

might have

For

that

its

rhyme

effects

1

45

were

MISSING MEASURES unsuitable to drama. This feeling in turn gives that verse itself

suggestions

drama and

that plays

drama develop

in the six-

might he unsuitable

should he written

rise to

to

in prose.

Viable vernacular verse forms for

teenth century. Giangiorgio Trissino’s tragedy of Sofonisba, with its

unrhymed

pioneering use of

When

hendecasyllabics, dates from 1515.

1543 Giraldi Cinthio defends his use of verse instead of

in

prose for his tragedy, Dido, he states he believes that Trissino has

given Italian playwrights a measure as effective as the iambic trimeter (or “senarius”) in which dialogue in ancient

commonly It

written:

likewise appeared to Signor Trissino that prose

adapted

drama was

to tragedy.

Therefore he composed

was not

at all

his Sofonisba in that sort

of verses which he before anyone else most suitably gave to the stage

of the iambic which the Greeks and Latins used. For

in place

appeared

rhyme

him

to

that these verses loosed

carried with

composed

them

the

of iambics, in the

same reason

Greek and

from the obligation for

common

it)

in

In

England

in the first

occurs.

mouths

of

being as the senarii,

the Latin tongues, namely,

that they are similar to the familiar speech of our times,

the iambics, from the

it

of speakers

and

fall,

(though they do not

like

know

speech."

in the last

two decades

Employing

two decades of the sixteenth century and

of the seventeenth, a related

development

unrhymed iambic pentameter, Marlowe,

the

Greene, Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont, and Fletcher

produce

a

body of dramatic poetry that not only

bly, surpasses uity. In

neille in

any comparable body

France

in the

dramatic poetry

seventeenth century,

and Racine and

meter,

of

in

rivals hut,

argua-

in antiq-

in the plays of

Cor-

those comedies of Moliere that are

rhymed vernacular

verse achieves a similar triumph.

These developments, however, do not resolve the debate about the proper vehicle for drama. Indeed, the contrasting successes of

English blank verse and French Alexandrine couplets contribute

146

THE REVERSES OF TIME to variations

Dryden’s

More

on and continuations of the debate,

critical

writings

a fact to

attest.

pertinent to the issue at hand,

dramas, especially comedies

Lopez

(as

some sixteenth-century

indicates in his dialogue),

are written in prose. Moreover, one hears, in the

arguments

favor of prose drama, notes that will be sounded later,

which

in

when, much

poets begin to advocate free verse. Particularly crucial in this

regard

is

the argument, voiced by various sixteenth-century pro-

ponents of prose drama, that meter not only

with poetry, but also

argument Lopez,

is

is

not to be identified

is

detrimental to poetic verisimilitude. This

offered in The Ancient Philosophy of Poetry

just before saying that Italian prose

says that “imitation ...

meter has no likeness

is

when

comedies are poems,

based on verisimilitude, and speech

to truth”

(

imitacion

.

.

esta

.

fundada en

in la

vensimilitud, y el hablar en metro no tiene alguna semejanqa de

verdad)T As a more extended

illustration

of

this

argument, we

may cite a passage in Paoli Beni’s 1596 Disputation in which it is Shown how to Excel at Comedy and Tragedy Freed of the Chains of Meter: (IJn

comedy and

in

prose, less properly

—

an imitation of

is

done or

as they

achieved

in

imitate

—

of verse. Therefore prose poetry

we

human actions properly with nay, even absurdly when bound by the limits

tragedy

is

to be practiced, verse rejected,

human

.

since

actions either as they actually

were

.

.

should have been done, neither of which can be

comedy and tragedy through an

imitation

bound down

by verseT

To

be sure, writers have always realized that

it

takes talent and

training to write naturally in meter; and writers have often ob-

served that

if

meter

is

a

wonderfully

flexible

instrument

in the

hands of the expert poet, the inept or inexperienced author may have great selves,

it

difficulties is

with the medium. But of meters them-

traditionally

recognized

(e.g.,

Aristotle,

Poetics

i448b2off.; Cicero, Orator, 178; Quintilian, 9.4.1 14-15) that they

M7

MISSING MEASURES get established precisely tor the reason that they

and

in

some

cases even exemplify, naturally

appreciated patterns of living speech.

might be the

seem

poet’s

enemy

and

instinctively

The argument

foreign to earlier criticism

is

an invention or

to be

accommodate, meter

that

and would

of the Renaissance debate that

a result

—

we have been examining. It is a version of this argument meter gets in the way of natural poetic expression that will

—

become

a central part of the theories of poets

that

later

such as Lawrence,

Pound, and William Carlos Williams.

Though

sixteenth-century discussions of imitation generally

are as inadequate to deal with lyric verse as the Poetics

itself is,

certain critics attempt to relate lyric verse to discussions of issues

involving the is

at least

more obviously mimetic

one Renaissance

however Heetingly, the plays,

treatise

types of poetry.

verse.

This

from 1592, is Agostino Michele’s Discourse shown Contrary to the Opinion of All the Most the Art of Poetry that

it

poems,

in

as well as

which dates

treatise,

which

it is

clearly

on

Illustrious Writers

possible to write Tragedy

is

there

on poetics that does address,

possibility that lyric

might be written without

And

and Comedy

Perfectly Well in Prose.

Michele’s

work

is

composed

to prose are delivered in short

longer ones.

The

treatise

is

in alternating sections.

Objections

paragraphs and are then refuted

divided into two larger parts, the

in

first

of which concerns almost exclusively tragedy and comedy, the

second of which deals with poetic art

mate section of the second

part,

in general. In the penulti-

one sees

a ghostly intimation of a

poetry from which meter has entirely vanished.

Here

the objec-

tion to prose runs: If

Comedy and Tragedy can

be possible to

first;

would

Epic and Lyric Poems, these being no

set forth

poetry than the

he set forth in Prose, so likewise

but

it is

less

not only far from the truth, but impos-

sible, that

an Epic Poem, a Sonnet, or a Madrigal be composed

Prose.

la

fiS'e

Comedia, e

la

it

in

Tragedia possono essere spiegate in Prosa

potrebbono essere spiegati parimenti

i

Poemi

Epici, e Lirici; cssendo

non

THE REVERSES OE TIME men de primi

dalla poesia compresi;

Poema

impossible, che un

composto in Prosa .)

Like other

Epico,

ma

&

e

un

critics

contended

Sonetto,

vet o,

od un Madrigale

ma sia

60

defending the use of prose, Michele wants

prose to be used only in certain cases. treatise

non pur lontano dal

And

that, just as imitation

is

having earlier

in his

to different degrees

appropriate to different types of poetry, so prose

is

to different

degrees suitable to different types of fiction, Michele argues at this point that prose

is

eminently suited

to

comedy,

less suited

tragedy, not suitable to epic, and utterly unsuitable to

deed, with regard to lyric verse, Michele says that

it

to

lyric. In-

“receives

its

form more from the number of its verses and the order of its rhymes than from any other intrinsic cause. Therefore it is a ridiculous thing to speak of making a Sonnet or

and implies

Prosa,

Prose

a contradiction” (piu dal ntimero de versi, e dalPordine

e ndicola cosa

il

dire di fare

un Sonetto, od una Canzone

in

& implica contraditione)P

Though

meterless lyric seems a ndicola cosa to Michele,

striking that he suggests

down

in

che da altra cagione intrinseca riceveno cotal forma.

delle rime,

Laonde

Canzone

a

byway

its

possibility.

It is

it

is

as if he briefly glances

that twentieth century poetry will

make

into

its

principal thoroughfare.

f The Modem

Opposition

of Verse and Poetry

After the sixteenth century, the debate about the

macy of prose imitation

falls

fiction dies

down, and

legiti-

the doctrine that poetry

is

gradually out of favor. In literary discussions, “imi-

tation” increasingly denotes “emulation of a

model” rather than

“feigning” or “story-telling.” Montaigne anticipates this develop-

149

MISSING MEASURES remarks about poetry

ment. In

his

Children”

ol 1580,

am

if

|

he wishes; that

ful,

if

intellect

If

the inventions are success-

and judgment have done

good poet ( bon poete ),’

I

their job well,

bad

will say, ‘hut a

when Montaigne

versificateur ).’” Yet

thinks good rhythm

poet| lengthen a short syllable,

of no importance.

is

who

not one of those

good poem. Let him the

a

the Education of

he draws the distinction between the poet and

versifier, saying: “I

makes

“On

in

‘Here

versifier

(

is

a

mauvais

introduces the concept of

imitation into his analysis, he does so not to fortify his poet-

argument, hut merely

versifier

Bellay’s followers as “lesser

masters and

who

“fall

men” who

|

Bellay].”

Ronsard’s and

denigrate

lack the excellence of their

very short of imitating

descriptions of the one (Ronsard] the other

to

and the

(

imiter ) the rich

delicate inventions of

62

In the seventeenth century, writers increasingly associate poetry with sublimity, a

development influenced by the recovery

the treatise on the subject by “Longinus.” Indeed,

cism

in the sixteenth

century

is

tacularly, affected by the diffusion of

the eighteenth century, of

elements appear

more

to he

literary criti-

greatly affected by the diffusion of

the Poetics, criticism in the seventeenth

rise, in

if

of

similarly, if less spec-

is

On

the Sublime.

Romantic theories

With

of art,

the

new

which comes more and

in discussions of poetry,

regarded as the expression of passion or musicality or

organic growth. Yet the results of harmonization of Aristotle with Quintilian

(and with Plutarch and the Servian estimate of Lucan) remain crucial.

verse

The

distinctions

between

and poetry are applied

happens

in literary history,

versifier

to the

newer

an idea created

lar situation drifts free of its initial

and poet and between contexts. to deal

As

with

so often

a particu-

meaning and purpose

after the

situation passes. Eventually, the idea attaches to other situations

and other meanings and purposes, and

formed

To

is

it

in the process trans-

into another idea altogether.

illustrate the persistence, into the

150

seventeenth century, of

\

THE REVERSES OF TIME the fusion of Aristotle’s tilian’s versificator

argument about mimesis with Quin-

remark, one may

cence of Hen Johnson’s reports that Jonson

visit

Drummond’s

cite

Scotland

to

in

1618.

reminis-

Drummond

commented about Du

Bartas “that he thought not Bartas a Poet but a Verser, because he wrote not Fiction.” 6 In *

a different spirit,

Henry Reynolds in his Mythomystes |i6p?| praises Edmund Spenser and Samuel Daniel but qualifies his praise by treating them as latter-day versions of Empedocles and Lucan:

must approve the learned Spenser,

I

poems, no

Fame

than his

less

doctrine: though

in the rest

of

his

Oueen, an extract body of ethic

some good judgments have wished (and perhaps

not without cause) that he had therein been a little freer of his fiction, and not so close-riveted to his moral; no less than to

Daniel

able

Civil Wars, that

s

work)

rhyme

(

Drayton

s

.

.

yet

it

many do were (though otherwise a commend-

somewhat more than

LTSP

198).

And

this

last

a true chronicle history in

comment

verse epistle to Reynolds, in .

whom

Samuel Daniel,

May spake

of,

if

recalls

Michael

which Drayton

refers to

I

but to sensurc doe denie,

Onely have heard some wisemen him rehearse,

To

be too

much

historian in verse;

His rimes were smooth, But yet

his

maner

his

meeters well did

better fitted prose

close,

64 .

In his preface to his romantic epic Gondibert of 1650, William Davenant offers a survey of the “Heroick Poem” from Homer

to

Spenser, and, after discussing can:

Lucan,

Homer and

Virgil, he says of

Lu-

who

chose to write the greatest actions that ever were allowed to be true, did not observe that such an enter.

.

.

prize rather beseem d an Historian then a Poet. this

Having made

Servian assessment, Davenant goes on to draw an Aristotelian

between the historian and poet: “I would imply that T ruth narrative and past is the Idol of Historians, who worship a dead thing, and truth operative, and by effects continually alive, is distinction

151

MISSING MEASURES

who

the Mistris of Poets,

reason

hath not her existence in matter but in

not factually and particularly but generally and

|i.e., 65

plausibly |.”

“Answer to Davenant’s Preface to Gondibert," also of Thomas Hobbes makes a more extended argument that

In his

1650,

from Aristotle and from sixteenth-century

clearly derives

inter-

pretations of the Poetics:

They

that take for poesy whatsoever

division imperfect

poetry

—

Hobbes has

epic, tragedy, satire,

and

edy],

|

call

writ in verse will think this

is

said that there exist only six genres of

comedy,

pastoral,

and pastoral com-

epigrams, eclogues, and the like pieces,

in sonnets,

which are hut essays and parts

of

Em-

an entire poem, and reckon

pedocles and Lucretius (natural philosophers) for poets, and the

moral precepts of Phocylides, Theognis, and the quatrains of Pybrach and the history

Lucan, and others of that kind amongst

of

poems, bestowing on such writers

for

honor the name

of poets rather

than of historians or philosophers. But the subject of a

manners tated;

of

poem

is

men, not natural causes; manners presented, not

and manners feigned

in

men. They

so

much.

as the

name

of poesy imports, not

the dic-

found

that give entrance to fictions writ in prose err not

(LTSP, 213)

In his later

“The Virtues

criticizes the Pharsalia spirit.

etry,

of

an Heroic

Poem”

on the grounds that

it

is

(1675),

Hobbes

too partisan in

This quality removes the epic from the realm of true po-

according to Hobbes,

defense of his judgment;

who “

predictably calls in Quintilian in

Lucan shews himself openly

in the

Pompeyan Faction, inveighing against Caesar throughout

Poem,

like Cicero against Cataline or

Marc Antony, and

is

his

there-

fore justly reckon’d by Quintilian as a Rhetorician rather than a

Poet.”

66

Dryden’s “Discourse Concerning the Original and Progress of Satire” of

lean heavily

152

1693

is

another significant work which seems to

on Quintilian’s analysis

of ancient poets. Indeed,

THE REVERSES OF TIME discussing satire, vation

( 1

Dryden quotes Quintilians well-known obser^at Roman poets invented the genre: Satira

0.1.93)

tota nostra

“Satire

est,

is

entirely ours.”

attention to epic, he appropriates

When Dryden

turns his

some of Quintilians remarks

about that topic as well, though to Quintilian’s observation about Lucan s fiery (ardens) quality, Dryden appears to add something of Joseph Scaliger’s criticism of Lucan. Scaliger had written:

Lucans talent was violent and terrible. ... he didn’t know what it was to make a Poem” Lucanus violentissimum et ter-

(

nbilissimum ingenium

na sceu que cestoit que faire un make use of Scaliger’s characteri-

il

Poeme). Dryden also seems to

whom

zation of Statius, after Virgil,

Scaliger had called “the

and he doesn’t rant and rave

poete epicus apres Vtrgile, et In his

remarks about

epic,

like

Lucan”

ne declame point

il

interesting that

it is

epic poet

first

{le

premier

comme Luca in

b7 ).

Dryden

interprets Quintilian’s term versificator in a descriptive rather than a pejorative sense:

Now

it it

may

of epic poetry, so

much

as

I

me

to

go back again

have confessed that no

man

farther

knew

not

add that

how

Lucan

to the consideration

hitherto has reached, or

approached, to the excellencies of

must

eye; that

be permitted

Homer

or Virgil;

I

Statius, the best versificator next to Virgil,

to design after is

him, though he had the model in his wanting both in design and subject, and is besides

too full of heat and affectation.

(OOP, 2 82 ) .

Jonson, Reynolds, Drayton, Davenant, Hobbes, and Dryden are, to varying degrees, still arguing in favor of the concept of

poetry as imitation. At points in the second half of the seventeenth century, however, Aristotelian ideas come to he deployed to de-

fend sublimity rather than imitation. This trated by

Edward

Phillips,

of English Words (5th

who

phenomenon

in his dictionary,

The

New

ed., 1696), defines “Versifier” as “a

Verses, generally taken in an

ill

sense,”

68

and who

is

in the

illus-

World

maker of preface to

*53

MISSING MEASURES

his 1675

may have had

Milton

— hand —

Theatrum Poetarum a

a preface in

his uncle

management

which makes up the

that

is

perfection of a poet. In other arguments a

man may appear

a

more sublime

argument

the

mere

now and

historical relation spiced over

least,

with a

And

therefore

little

slight fiction,

is

it

then a personated virtue or vice rising out of the ground and

makes

uttering a speech, which brief, obscure, or

story, in

it

the nobler the in-

vention and by consequence the greater the poet. not a

good

of this alone a great poet; for

invention be the grand part of a poet, or maker, and verse the

then certainly the

|ohn

writes of epic poetry:

|T]he greatness of the argument ...

poet, in the right

which

poem, but

a heroic

remote tradition, hut

which the poet hath an ample

of

it

must be rather

some remarkable

field to

a

piece of

enlarge by feigning of

probable circumstances.

69

Phillips offers the Aristotelian characterization of the poet as a

“maker”; he

and

also asserts that “verse

that poetry

is

maker no longer

]

of a plausible, coherent plot, hut of a brief,

poem

—

its

theme or subject

that

the

sublime

who will similarly elevate the

form. Emerson’s famous remark that

metre-making argument,

is

obscure, or remote tradition.”

Phillips thus prefigures later writers of a

the least” part of poetry

is

not “historical.” Yet for Phillips, the poet

argument, involving “a

“argument”

|

makes

“it

a

— over

its

metrical

not metres, but a

is

poem”

{EL, 450)

illus-

trates this tendency.

In the eighteenth century, Aristotelian ideas are

defense of the concept of poetry as passion. adaptation

is

An

adapted

to the

instance of such an

provided by John Dennis’ Advancement and Refor-

mation of Modern Poetry of 1701. Echoing chapter one of the Poetics

and challenging the popular

identification of poetry with

meter, Dennis writes:

As poetry

must be an imitation of nature. That the instrument with which it makes its imitation is speech need not he is

an

art,

it

disputed. That the speech must he musical no one can doubt.

That is

the speech by

which poetry makes

evident, for passion

>54

is still

more

its

imitation

necessary to

it

.

.

.

must be pathetic

than harmony. For

THE REVERSES OF TIME harmony only

distinguishes

passion distinguishes

poetry

A

its

poetry, because

is

discourse that

is

instrument from that of prose, hut very nature and character. For therefore

it is

its

more

passionate and sensual than prose.

written in very good numbers,

if

it

wants passion,

can be but measured prose. But a discourse that is everywhere extremely pathetic, and consequently everywhere bold and figurative, is certainly poetry without numbers. (

LTSP

,

273-74)

Dennis takes the Aristotelian position that poetry is imitation and that it is wrong to identify poetry with harmonious speech. For Dennis, however, poetry imitates “nature” rather than hu-

man

action

and

Whereas some

distinguished by passion rather than plot. sixteenth-century critics had argued that fiction is

without meter was poetry, and that meter without fiction was not, Dennis argues that prose with passion and pathos is poetry

and

meter (“good numbers”) without them is “measured prose.” Another early eighteenth-century instance of the verse-poetry

that

distinction appears in a letter that

“writ like a

Alexander Pope writes in 1710. that Richard Crashaw was a gifted amateur who Gentleman, that is, at leisure hours” and who did not

exhibit a professional poet art,

concern with the larger matters of the Pope characterizes “Verse” as being merely part of the “dress”

of poetry.

Somewhat

s

in the

manner of Renaissance

Aristotelians,

he urges that a poem’s soul and body consist of “Design, Form, [and] Fable and of a unified adjustment or “consent of parts. Crashaw excelled with respect to verse and ornament, Pope says, but, like other

amateurs, was unequipped or uninchned to

achieve higher qualities.

works

And

referring to a copy of Crashaw’s

that he evidently enclosed with his letter,

All that regards Design,

Form, Fable, (which

is

Pope comments!

the Soul of Poetry)

that concerns exactness, or consent of parts, (which

is

all

the Body) will

probably be wanting; only pretty conceptions, fine metaphors,

and something of a neat cast of Verse, (which are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of Poetry) may he found in these verses. This is indeed the case of most other Poetical glitt’ring expressions,

*55

;

MISSING MEASURES Writers of Miscellanies nor can be a true Poet,

who

he consider’d as

under

this

head

well be otherwise, since no

it

man can

writes tor diversion only. These Authors shou’d

Versifiers

and witty Men, rather than

will only fall the

and

as Poets;

Thoughts, the Expression, and the

Numbers." Subsequently, urging that Crashaw

still

merits admiration re-

gardless of his deficiencies, Pope remarks that “the time consider’d of his writing, he

the worst Versificators.”

was

(ev’n as uncorrect as he

1

(It

is

Pope himself would become employs and that

critics

genuine poet or merely In his “Life’’ of Poetics’ first

a

is

none of

interesting that a century later

victim of the vocabulary that he

a

would come

a writer

to ask

whether he was

Abraham Cowley,

who

a

of versified argumentation.) Dr. }ohnson refers to the

chapter and treats the metaphysical poets as

pedoclean writers fiction. It

is)

Em-

express knowledge instead of composing

worth observing that Dr. Johnson suggests

more comprehensive and perhaps more

in

passing

useful definition of

poetic imitation than does Aristotle:

The metaphysical

men

show

their

learning was their whole endeavor. But, unluckily resolving to

show

it

in

rhyme, instead

poets were

of writing poetry they only

often such verses as stood the for the

of learning,

trial of

and

to

wrote verses, and very

the finger better than of the ear,

modulation was so imperfect that they Wv.re only found

to be

verses by counting the syllables. If

the father of criticism

|

Aristotle

|

has rightly denominated po-

etry Texvi] piprpciKfp ‘an imitative art’, these writers will, without

great wrong, lose their right to the

name of poets

for they

cannot be

said to have imitated anything: they neither copied nature nor

life,

neither painted the forms of matter nor represented the operations of intellect.

In the

Romantic period and

after, Aristotle’s ideas

are subject to mutations almost too

many

to

about poetry

number. Several may

be mentioned. In the twenty-second chapter of his Biographia Literaria,

Coleridge

cites the Poetics’

ninth chapter and, through a

\

THE REVERSES OF TIME slight

misreading, introduces an interesting reversal of Aristotle’s position. Coleridge refers to Aristotle’s statement (14511)6-7) that poetry

is

a

more

philosophical and serious business than history”

{philosophdteron \ai spoudaioteron poiesis historias estin).

However,

probably quoting from memory, Coleridge speaks of “the essence

which Aristotle pronounces to be GnovSaiOTCiTOV Kai 3 2 -33>35> 2 57-58

erns, 233

306-07 n. 29; on

307

of poet, 40; Eliot

505 n. 17

Winters, Yvor, 302 verse,

58, 283; definition

between the Ancients and Mod-

rule, 13

Wilson,

54-55; Coleridge on, 107; comparison of meter to common law,

34,

Zola, Emile, 188; on experimental science

and experimental

fiction,

253-54, 260; on skepticism and experimental reasoning, 256

V

..

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3 9999 Oil

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9 463

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COPLEY

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PN1059 F7S74 1990

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in

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cates the date on or before which this

book should be returned to the Library. Please do not remove cards from this pocket.

II

Bill

I

III

I

III III

Timothy Steele was born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1948. He has a doctorate from Brandeis University and received a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. He is an associate professor of English at California

State University, Los Angeles. Steele

is

the author of

poetry, Uncertainties

two

collections of

and Rest and Sapphics

Against Anger and Other Poems. Recipient of the Peter I.B. Lavan Younger Poets Award

from the Academy of American Poets and

a

Guggenheim

Fellowship, Steele lives in Los

Angeles with

his wife, Victoria.

'

^

£i

/a

.

.

.

New

Anger

w w

,

i-

....

/

w ,

y ,f

.

«jk^c «c

/

V

Formalists.

With

Steeje^ Stepped to the front

of younger' poets

his Sapphics Against

of

a fast-rising

move-

ment. Put as yet nobody knows that Steele also happens to be the best critic that the

movement

has

produced—

the most ambitious, well read, and intelligent,

f

expect

Missing Measures to break to the world the good

news

about him. ... “Certain to provoke controversy, Steele’s arguments

w

^i

must be among the most eminent

and most respected of the recent wave

v_y

*t ^Ce'Cr^s^A-^ '

v^

“Professor Steele

dubbed the

•

me as anyone who strike

so forceful, so well thought through, that assails

them

will find the

going X.

‘ ‘

|

J.

difficult.”

Kennedy

Missing Measures will be controversial. Steele upsets a

number of

|

applecarts which have been having an easy

ride for the last

few decades.”

Donald

E.

Stanford

*