IX THE VALUE OF POETRY TO THOSE WHO WISH TO LIVE IN THE SPIRIT POETRY helps to lift us from the "earth," while not effacing true human interests. It can do much for the human spirit in the struggles we must undergo, if only we know how to appreciate it. It is natural and yet spiritual! And this is why I believe in its ethical value. Yet it would be difficult to explain what it is that gives so peculiar an influence to a line of poetry. We may come upon the same thought in another form; but it does not have the same effect. Poetry will linger in the consciousness as a mood; it seems to leave a kind of afterglow. When the sentiment begins to revive, we try to say over to ourselves the line precisely as we first read it or heard it. We put ourselves to a great deal of trouble in order to recover the exact form of language. Nothing else will quite take its place. We can recall the thought or sentiment; but we are not satisfied with the bare thought or sentiment. They do not serve to awaken precisely the same glow of heart. Nothing else will do it save just that one line of poetry. It is not an uncommon experience for a man to travel hundreds if not thousands of miles, in order to He can look once more upon a certain landscape. call it back in memory; but as a recollection, it does not bring back the exquisite emotions which came with the actual scene. He might go elsewhere and meet with landscapes of far greater beauty. Yet they will not answer his purpose. He yearns for that one particular scene. It had somehow become a part of himself. There is something almost personal about the beauty of nature. It twines itself about the feelings and clasps them together into one intense experience. We return again and again to the same locality for relief and inspiration, just as we like to go back to the same old human companionships. What is true of the beauty of Nature is equally true of the beauty of poetry. We can all think of times in our past lives when we have been stirred profoundly by some verse or poem. It has linked itself with our moods and experiences and becomes an actual part of ourselves. When we lose sight of it we are conscious that something has passed away from our being. Poetry, as every one knows, does not exist for the purpose of enlightening the mind. When we want instruction in philosophy, we read philosophy; when we seek instruction in the principles of life or society, we read ethics or economics. But under these circumstances we do not go to poetry. Its function is not in giving rules of life, laws of nature, or truths of philosophy. Poetry exists not to enlighten but to inspire. It does its greatest work when it fires the heart, rather than when it instructs the mind. It accomplishes its supreme purpose when it stirs the will to action. I believe that the greatest faculty of the human being is enlightened will-power. What can especially influence this faculty is not philosophy, not economics, not natural science, but art or poetry. The test of every work of true art must be, therefore, whether it can inspire. Its value can only be estimated by that means. We are driven to measure its power by the influence which it will have upon us, whatever it may have accomplished at other times. Homer may have been a greater genius than Wordsworth, but I am equally satisfied that Wordsworth is worth more to us personally than Homer. A great poet in our own language will always be worth more to us than a great poet in other people's language. Art must use our speech. There is just this difference, as every man can observe, in the way poetry or music affects us, and in the way we are affected by learning a new fact or truth. A thought has only to be recognized by the mind, in order to be received and accepted; but in order to be influenced by a work of art, we have to respond to it, to give back something out of ourselves. There is a good reason why the classic poets of other races do not and cannot appeal to us in the same way as the writers of our own age and country. It goes with the very first elements of human nature or of human character. Poetry, as we have said, cannot influence by the bare thought. It is true, we might be able, even now, to derive as much from Marcus Aurelius or Plato, as was possible for the men who were alive in those days. But no human being of our time can be affected by Sophocles or Horace, as were those who lived at the time of those poets. We can translate ideas or thoughts from another language into ours; but we cannot as easily translate the sound of a word, or the rhythm of a verse; we can revive the sentiment, but we can never quite enter into the condition of mind of the man who received it in his mother tongue. Words or tones are clusters of feeling. Poetry uses words and tones which represent those clusters of feeling. We cannot for that reason fully express the poetry of another language in our own speech. When we try it we lose that quality of tone or sound. We may be able to impart the idea of the poem, but it will not call forth the same sentiment in the heart. That is to say, it fails to inspire. We do not read Homer when we do it in translation. Even the best translation of Goethe's "Faust" is tame and commonplace. I should like to illustrate this fact of the importance of mere tone or sound as constituting so much of the value of true poetry. Read, for example, the inscription that was supposed by Dante to be placed over the gateway of Hell. Naturally it is mournful. The poet would like, if it were possible, to have tears in the very sound of the words. As he uses them, he would be glad if the eyes of the listener should moisten, or if we should unconsciously heave a sigh as we read them. Instinctively he chooses the most melancholy tones in the scope of his vocabulary. It reads: "Per me si va nella città dolente, Per si va nell' eterno Dolore, Per si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto Fattore: Facemi li divina Potestate, La somma Sapienza, e il primo Amore. Se non eterne, ed io eterno dure: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate." This strikes me as being the most perfect illustration in literature of the special power of mere tones in words. There is a sombre gloom about them. You say them over to yourself and they almost give you a shiver. They stir one like the solemn notes of the organ. The only other parallel I could think of, would be some portions of the "funeral march" in one of the sonatas of Beethoven. I do not know that there is anything even in Milton which can compare with them. You may read them over again and again. They would always have the same effect. They will leave just one impression, that of the most awful gloom. Now read the translation of these lines, made by one of the leading poets of the English language in our century: 66 Through me the way is to the city dolent; Created me divine Omnipotence, The highest Wisdom and the primal Love. All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" There is no poetry at all in these lines of Longfellow. It is a bare, dry statement of facts. He might as well have said in so many words: "This is the gateway of Hell." Unless we can read the language of |