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| ISBN-13: | 9781775581147 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 338 |
| File size: | 615 KB |
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Look Back Harder
Critical Writings 1935â"1984
By Allen Curnow, Peter Simpson
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 1987 Allen CurnowAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-114-7
CHAPTER 1
Poetry and Language
1
WRITING poetry is an art.
Art (Mr Eric Gill's definition) is skill in making.
A thing made must be made of something.
Poetry is made of language. A thing made must be made for something.
Poetry is made for the pleasure and stimulation of the mind.
(The mind, it should be remembered throughout these Notes, is not an abstraction — e.g. nothing. Like every other living thing it lives by giving out and taking in. It gives out and takes in through the bodily senses.)
A reasonable definition of the art of poetry: The skilful making of things with language, things which will please and stimulate the mind.
2
Language may be regarded as the 'material' of the art of poetry.
What is language in itself?
Briefly, language is a system of sounds subtly related to experience, making possible the communication of experience from one person to another.
By a system of symbols corresponding to sounds (writing or printing) human experience may be fixed in a material form, and communication through the eye is possible.
Such 'fixation' of language has two effects: it makes necessary a greater measure of agreement on the exact system for recording experience; and it makes possible more intensive study of the system itself, since the sounds represented may be repeated in the mind an infinite number of times.
It is only in the light of the latter effect that language can be the 'material' of an art; because such a 'material' must have objective existence so that it is susceptible to manipulation by an artist, so that (in fine) things can be made out of it.
However, it is important to remember that language is in the last resort the human faculty of speech. The essence of language is ordinary conversation.
Language written is necessary to the art of poetry. Though spoken poetry has been made, and handed down, it has not exactness proper to art — art equals skill — at its best.
3
It is possible to compare different languages as media for communicating experience, e.g., classical Latin with Elizabethan English or either with modern English.
But these comparisons are profitless.
Clearly the best 'material' for the exercise of art (skill) is the material whose properties can be accurately and completely known.
The only material of this kind is the language spoken by the artist's own generation.
This spoken language may be modified (as will be shown later), but only according to practical necessity — I mean that it may only be modified insofar as that is necessary to preserve its nature as language (a means of communicating experience) for the benefit of a greater number of people.
4
There are 'dead' languages.
These are in a sense 'alive' in that they also communicate experience, from the past to the present.
But poetry is never written in what is, at the time, a 'dead' language.
There are a number of reasons for this: —
(a) Poetry, like any other art, has a direct relation to human needs.
(b) Human needs (in terms of language) can only be well served by things made out of the language with which human beings (including the artist) are most familiar.
(c) All the things which can be most usefully said or written in a 'dead' language have already been said or written. That is why it is called 'dead'.
5
Poetry, to be effective as 'a thing made in language to please and stimulate the mind,' can only be written in a 'living' language.
Please remember here that a 'living' language must be a language spoken by living people.
The only variations from the spoken language which are permissible are those dictated by the currency of written works among a great number of people among whom varieties of speech are used.
6
Language can exist in forms more, or less, pleasing to the mind; more, or less, suited to convey experience of different sorts to people of different sorts.
The best written language never corresponds exactly to commonly accepted high standards of speech.
Hence, apparently, the development of a more or less uniform 'literary' language.
The 'literary' language is excusable as a practical necessity.
7
Poetry must have its feet on the familiar earth of plain speech.
It must move in the orderly manner of accepted written language — a 'reasonably literary language.'
'Written English,' however, inevitably lags behind changing standards and customs of speech. Thus from time to time, from place to place, it tends to lose its living quality.
8
I have said that all the things which can be usefully said or written in a 'dead' language have already been said or written.
I have also said that the written language may lose its living quality.
Some branches of the living language may be 'quasi-dead.'
This explains why it is impossible for anything of importance to becommunicated by the jargon of politicians, in the language of the leader page of a newspaper, or in the elaborate pastiche used in the pulpit and at the prayer-desk.
One might as well expect a statement of the Theory of Relativity in the language of the Authorized Version.
Important things are communicated in the Authorized Version; but they are important still because no experience, however well recorded, is ever absorbed completely as part of the social heritage.
The past always has something to say to the present.
But when the present speaks to the present it must use the language of the present — not the leavings of the language (preserved in textbooks and newspapers) of 50 or 500 years ago.
What is worth preserving has been naturally preserved in plain speech.
To each age its own experience.
To each age its own language.
To each age its own literature.
9
The making of poetry is conditioned otherwise than by the natural exigencies of language.
To please the mind (mind served by the senses) poetry is made rhythmic.
Poetry also takes account of the acceptability to the mind of ordered sounds.
Language used for poetry is therefore less free than language used otherwise. It is less susceptible to the reviving influence of plain speech. Further —
Poetry has become an 'end in itself,' quite apart from the native purpose of language (to communicate experience) and the native purpose of poetry (to give pleasure to the mind.)
The main desire of the poet, tending to exclude all others, may be to make a poem.
It is now a peculiar (and not always commendable) habit, to read poetry.
It is a still more peculiar (and more doubtfully commendable) habit, to write poetry.
10
This separation of poetry from its original human uses has tended to 'fix' the language of poetry.
We have seen examples of writing in a language which is thought of as specially 'poetical.'
Such language is what I have called 'quasi-dead.'
And it is impossible to say anything of importance in a 'dead' language.
Not that poetry is primarily concerned with the saying of important things.
But a poet must say something. Otherwise he is denying the very nature of his material, language.
And a poet must say something the communication of which satisfies a human need, however often the same need may have been satisfied before.
It is impossible to say the same thing twice.
A sentence repeated is either a meaningless noise or virtually a new sentence.
11
If a poet uses a 'quasi-dead' language, he is open to the danger of making meaningless noises.
A 'nothing' is a 'nothing,' however 'sweet' it may be.
The language of most New Zealand poets is 'quasi-dead.'
So was the language of the Georgians.
Such language is commonly known as 'poetical.'
In conclusion: I do not, most emphatically, intend to make a plea for what is vulgarly called 'simplicity' or 'clarity' in poetry. Communicability varies with the nature of experience. If an experience can only be entered into by a limited number of people, it is clear that the poem in which it is communicated will find a correspondingly limited audience.
* * *
First published as a Right-Angle Booklet in an edition of 150 copies by the Caxton Club Press, Christchurch (predecessor of the Caxton Press) in 1935. The following prefatory note was included:
These observations on poetry and language are presented exactly as they were developed, in a broken, note form. This is particularly convenient — as even the writers of school textbooks have discovered — in the presentation of the 'elements' of any study. I have adopted it, not because I have written for children, but because I have written for those 'literary' people — professors of English, graduates, editors of newspaper literary columns and their satellites — who have not yet passed the elementary stages of a reasoned understanding of the art of poetry.
Eric Gill (1882–1940), whose Art and a Changing Civilisation (London, 1934) supplied the definition of art referred to in the first section, was an English sculptor, engraver, writer and typographer; Poetry and Language was handset by Denis Glover in a typeface invented by Gill. In a descriptive catalogue of Caxton publications since 1935 issued in 1941 Glover wrote: 'We can still feel pleased with this happy piece of typography, carried out in Gill Sans-serif 10 point widely leaded, and printed on heavy esparto. Gill liked it, too.'
CHAPTER 2Poets in New Zealand: Problems of Writing and Criticism
THERE has been a good deal of sentimental chatter, not as a rule very discriminating, about the poetry written by New Zealanders in New Zealand. Probably more than enough for the good health of the poets and of the public attitude to poetry. Most of such talk has been effective only in wedging an art commonly spoken of as national into a niche to which only the most enthusiastic dare approach their fingers. It would be far better to leave the poets alone. The production of good poetry cannot be assisted by the 'national literature' sentiment. To expect that is about as sensible as to expect a thoroughly good Laureate ode. The sentiment is all the more dangerous because, except as a motive of writers, it is largely admirable.
Both commendation and blame of New Zealand poets show that criticism is for the most part unreflective. The important questions, rarely implied, are, What is required of a poet in New Zealand? and, Is he to be judged by any standard other than that applied to the body of English poetry (whatever that standard may be)? Most New Zealand critics, of those whose work is printed in large part, appear to answer Yes to the second question. Their answer to the first appears mainly as an assumption that poetry is, in the phrase of the authors of 1066 And All That, a Good Thing; from which it has followed that poetry, the writing of it and the reading of it, is being firmly cemented in by those who are busy on the foundations of national culture. Quite rightly, too; but the poets (of whom there are a few) properly resent being cemented in as well. Practising artists do not belong among the foundations of the national culture, like so many illustrious corpses below the paving of Westminster Abbey. Their business is with the progressive design of the vast structure, a design for the living of generations to come — not to mention the lighting and heating.
If an answer can be found to the question, What is required of a poet in New Zealand?, it should include a correct answer to the question whether he is to be judged by a standard other than that applied to the body of English poetry. Distinctively, poetry is concerned with the expression of aesthetic values in language. Its raw material is the language, as clearly as the raw material of a sculptor is stone or bronze. Language, being essentially a means of communicating experience, ideal or emotional, is obviously a more difficult medium for the artists to work in than stone or bronze; the pure forms of language (as those of music) exist only for the mind; one cannot, like the Bishop at St Praxed's, distinguish offhand the values of lapis lazuli and the wretched Gandolf's 'paltry onionstone' as material for the artist.
Aesthetic values in poetry, therefore, emerge from the delicate balance of word with content, order of reason and sentiment brought out of a chaos of minutely varying associations, delighting the mind; and from the sound of word and phrase, and the counterpoint of set rhythm and natural rhythm, delighting the senses. The two delights cannot, of course, be separated, any more than mind and senses can be separated. It is required of any poet that he shall produce them in one degree or another.
Before proceeding to consider what is required of a poet in New Zealand, it seemed necessary to attempt some statement of what it is fairly safe to assume about a poet's function as an artist. So much, then, may be urged as universal. What of the particular? What about New Zealand?
Poetry requires for its fulfilment two things — a writer and a reader. The language is, or should be, common ground on which writer and reader meet. Leaving aside for the moment the matter of appreciation, it may be said that the poets write for those people who can understand the language, and who (further) can distinguish between the good and bad expressions of the language. In the first instance the poet must take his public ready-made. Later he may to some extent guide the public in the way of his choice, or (less often) someone else may guide the public in that way for him. And sooner or later a poet is judged by the public for which he wrote.
For whom are the New Zealand poets writing? That is a question very seldom asked. It is a question vital to criticism, since the critic necessarily assumes the role of qualified representative of the reading public. It is no less vital to the poets. Many New Zealand poets balk the question. Sometimes they address their compositions to the editors of the daily newspapers, and if these truly represent a community of competent readers all may be well. Sometimes the poets speak to a public with which they are related only by a subscription to an exclusive English periodical, and the results belong neither to that public nor to the country of origin. And sometimes, very rarely, the appeal is to New Zealand as the poets know New Zealand.
Perhaps it may not seem fair to say to the critic, 'Know to whom the poet is speaking', especially when the poet is rather vague on the point. But the critics must try, as some of them do, even when they are only too sure that the poet is not speaking to them. It is, however, right to say emphatically to the poet, 'Know to whom you are speaking.' It is not by chance that speaking to oneself is popularly considered a sign of mental weakness. People who talk at large about 'self-expression' in the arts are inclined to think of expression as beginning and ending with the self. Expression, of the self or anything else, must always be 'to' someone else. That is absolutely true of language, which exists primarily as a means of communication among human beings.
Therefore the poet must, absolutely must, have some idea of his readers. If many New Zealand poets and would-be poets examined themselves accordingly, there would be a great deal less imitative stuff, mere monkey-tricks to satisfy the desire to imitate; there would be a great deal less belabouring of well-worn sentiments — putting into verse what is too unimportant or trite for even friends to listen to. And there would be less elaboration of the beauties of sunsets for the benefit (presumably) of people for whom the one word 'gorgeous!' would embody all requirements.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Look Back Harder by Allen Curnow, Peter Simpson. Copyright © 1987 Allen Curnow. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Acknowledgements,
Author's Note,
Introduction,
A note on the text,
1 Poetry and Language (1935),
2 Poets in New Zealand (1937),
3 Rata Blossom or Reality? (1938),
4 Prophets of Their Time (1940),
5 The Last of Yeats (1940),
6 A Job for Poetry (1941),
7 The Poetry of R. A. K. Mason (1941),
8 Aspects of New Zealand Poetry (1943),
9 Introduction to A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–45 (1945),
10 A Dialogue with Ngaio Marsh (1945),
11 Modern Australian Poetry (1947),
12 A. R. D. Fairburn: a Sketch in Advance of a Visit (1947),
13 Three Caxton Poets: Brasch, Baxter, Hart-Smith (1948),
14 James K. Baxter: Blow, Wind of Fruitfulness (1948),
15 Painting in Canterbury (1950),
16 The New Zealand Poetry Yearbook (1951),
17 The Poetry Yearbook: a Letter to Louis Johnson (1953),
18 M. H. Holcroft: Dance of the Seasons (1953),
19 E. H. McCormick: The Expatriate (1955),
20 Introduction to The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse (1960),
21 Frank Sargeson: A Time for Sowing (1961),
22 Introduction to Collected Poems by R. A. K. Mason (1962),
23 New Zealand Literature: the Case for a Working Definition (1964),
24 Louis MacNeice (1964),
25 Distraction and Definition: Centripetal Directions in New Zealand Poetry (1970),
26 Two Prefaces: (i) Four Plays (1972) (ii) Collected Poems 1933–73 (1974),
27 Conversation with Allen Curnow (1973),
28 Coal Flat Revisited (1963, 1976),
29 Douglas Lilburn (1980),
30 Denis Glover: An Introduction to the Poems (1981),
31 Olson as Oracle: 'Projective Verse' Thirty Years On (1982),
32 About Dylan Thomas (1982),
33 'Dichtung und Wahrheit': A Letter to Landfall (1984),
Index,
Copyright,