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Prose

Notes but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. In the last article I tried
to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and
suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written.
The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And
I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not
precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having
“more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very
varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations. The analogy was that of the catalyst.
When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum,
they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless
the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently
unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of
platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the
more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the
mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are
its material.
The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst,
are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it
is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one
emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in
particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry
may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely.
Canto XV of the Inferno (Brunetto Latini) is a working up of the emotion evident in the situation;
but the effect, though single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable complexity of
detail. The last quatrain gives an image, a feeling attaching to an image, which “came,” which did
not develop simply out of what precedes, but which was probably in suspension in the poet’s
mind until the proper combination arrived for it to add itself to. The poet’s mind is in fact a
receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there
until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.
If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the
variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of “sublimity”
misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness,” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but
the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place,
that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of
the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may
give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore, than Canto XXVI, the voyage of Ulysses,
which has not the direct dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the process of
transmution of emotion: the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic
effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the
artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the
protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination
which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses.
In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings
which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly,
perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring
together.
The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of
the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a “personality” to
express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which

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