LITERIURE / CRITICISM

F- R. Leavis

YMw tuwffimmg*
Wmffiwmw&pw
'Eruglish' as a Discipline of Tbought
With an Introd.uction by Paul Dean
Leavis's central preoccupatiot.t here is e nature of thought and
language, and e rvay in which oughts are expressed r lan-
guage. His supple and vigorous analysis of T S. Eliot's "Four
Quartcts" is considered by many thc most valuable part of the
book.

"Leai'is's great strength as a critic lies in his loving, delicate, dis-

criminating probir.rg of a rvriter's fusiol of Ianguage and
thought."-Ner Torh Tiwes Booh Review

"Influential...unignorable... Lcavis's aim, the aim tbr which he

maintained the celtrality of literary criticism, was the creatiol of
ar.r intelligent public-it was lihe ly to be a small one-itt the midst
of a mass culture otherwise sunk in materialism and blankness."
Donoghue
-Denis
"Leavis was not as other critics. He was a guru) a leader, a n.ras-
tcr of those who la.row....His work was distinguished by e close
reading oftexts or selected passages....No. twentie -century crit
ic has been more insistent at e ftinction of literature is ulti-
matell. p61f, and that criticism n.rust alwa,vs be to a Iarge extent
a form of moral discrimir.ration."-]ohn Gross, New Torh Retiew
of Boobs

Oat n rlesign ln' Robcri Mt0ttua t

w
Ivan R. Dee, Inc.
ISBN I_5EEE3_],74-h

Publisher
Chicago 60622
EL40 / $16.95 ll[illilJ|il[illlull lililllflil
THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
'English' as a Discipline ofThought
 The Living Principle
.ENGLISH, A DISCIPLINE OF THOUGHT
AS

E R. Leavis

Witi an Introdurtion by Paul Deon

9
Elephant Paperbacks
IVAN R. DliE, PllllLISHEIi., OHI(]A(;O
 Contents

Preface P48e 9
r THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND
OBJECTIVITY r9
z JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
i 'Thought' and Emotional Quality 7r
ii Imagery and Movement 93
iii Reality and Sincerity r25
THE LIVING PRINCIPLE. Coplright O 1975 by F. R. Leavis.
New introduction copltight @ 1998 by Paul Dean, This book was first iv Prose 3+
published in London by Chatto and Windus, and is here reprinted by v ntony and Cleopatra and ll Loae t++
for
aangement.

First ELEPIINT PAPERBACK edition pubtished 1998 by Ivan R. Dee, Ioc., 3 FOUR QUARTETS
i B*nt Norton r55
432 North Halsted Street, Chicago 6o6zz. Manufactured in the United States
ofAmerica and printed on acid-fee paper. ii East Coer r92
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: iii The Dr1 Salvages zr6
Leavis, F. R. (Fraok Raymond), 1895- 2+9
iv Little Gidd.ing
The ling principle : "Englisn- as adiscipline ofthought / by
F, R. Leavis ; with ao intoduction by Paul Dean. rst Elephant
pbk. ed.
-
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Chatto &Windus, 1975.
"Elephant paperbacls,"
Includes bibliographical references and indet
ISBN r-S666:-r7a-6 (acid-free paper)
r. English literatur-History and criticism. z. Criticism.
3. Eliot,T. S. (Thomas Stearns), 1888-1965. Four qurtets.
4. Language and culture. I.Tide.
PR83.L399 r998
8or-dczr 97-1748
 Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank e following for permission to

reproduce copyright material :
Faber & Faber Ltd. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.,
New York, for extracts rom Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot,
rom Callected Poems tgog-t962. Copyright 1943 by T. S.
Eliot; copyright I97I, by Esme Valerie Eliot.

The author, Faber & Faber Ltd. and Basic Books, Inc', New
York,for extracts fromThe Knowerand The KnownbyMarjorie
Grene, Copyright 1966 by Marjorie Grene.

The Trustees of the Thomas Hardy Estate, Macmillan Co.

Ltd. of London and Basingstoke, The Macmillan Company
of Canada Ltd. and e Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. of New
York for 'After A Journey' from Collected Poezns by Thomas
Hardy. Copyright Ig25 by Macmillan Publishing Co', Inc.

The Society of Authors as the literry representative of the

Estate of A. E. Housman, Jonathan Cape Ltd. and Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, fnc. for an extrct from 'Reveille' in
Shropshire Lad fromThe Collected Poems of A. E. Housman.
Copyright tggg, tg+o, r965 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
Inc. Copyright t967, ry68 by Robert E. Sl.rnons'

The Estate of the late Mrs Frieda Lawrence, Wm' Heinemann

Ltd., Laurence Pollinger Ltd' and The Viking Pres, Inc., for
'Piano' from The Conphte Poems of D. H. Lawrmee edited by
Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts. Copyright 1964'
r97r by Angelo Ravagli and C. M. Weeklen Executors of
the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli.
Give up literary criticism! WrrrcrxsrBrx'
I knew en' and I know now, it is no use trying to -do
anything-I speak onJy for myself-publicly' It is no use trying
present forms. The whole great orm ol our
-."1u io modifv
*U h"o" .o [o. And noing will really send it down -but e
"*
new shoos of lile springing upnd slowly bursting the- founda-
tions. And one can do nothing, but ght tooth and nall to
defend e new shoots oflife from being crushed out, and let tem
grow. We can't make lie. We can but fight for^the life at
!.o*. i., r..r. D. H' Lawnrxc E, Nlte to'The Crawn"
There's no redeeming the democratic mas university' The
civilization it represnts has, almost overniglrt, - ceased to
believe in its own assumptions and recoils nihilistically from
iself. If you believe in humanity at all you will know that
nothing tday is more important tlan to keep alive e idea
of the" univlrsiw-function-the essential university-function
and what goes with it: e idea of an educated public' My
preoccupati-on is to ensure that te living seed exists and that
ih" Iife ir, it has the futl pregnancy. Just how it will strike and
take and develop, a it ,ttust if ere is to be a hurran uture'
,"" *"', for"r"L. Ch^rg" is certainly upon us, menacing and
certainly drastic; to met it, there must be opportunism-the
oooortunism that answers to a profound realization ofthe need'
i)rturiw rcmars before giaing'Thought, Latgaage and
Ojuth.t;4' in lexure-iistalments at ,he Uniersit! o forh'
Introduction
by Paul Dean
Frank Raymond Leavis was born in Cambridge, England, onJulyr4,
1895, and was educated there at the Perse School and at Emmnuel
Cege, where he went as a History Scholar in r9r4,_leaving-after. a
year t serve in World War I as a noncombatant medical orderly in
ihe Friends' Ambulance Unit. He was pesent t the Somme, an ex-
perience which left a profound effect upon him, ough he rarely
ipoke of it. Returning to Cambridge in r9r9, he swited his acade-
mic interest to English, then newly established as a degree subject,
and graduated with first class honors in rgzr-despite the death of
his fther, following an accident, on the morning of his first exami-
nation paper. He then embarked on research for the Ph'D. degree,
which he was awarded in tgz4 for a thesis on "The Relationship of
Journalism to Literature: Studies in the Rise and Earlier Develop-
ment of the Press in England." Unable to obtain a permanent 1ec-
tureship, he taught freelance for a number of colleges' One of lis
pupils,-QLeenie Doroy Roth, became his wife in 19z9 and, as QD'
Les, established her own reputation as a terary critic, principally
of the novel, both independently and in collaboration with her hus-
band. She never obtained an official university teaching post but
worked from home, amid the exigencies of domestic life (the couple
had nvo sons and a daughter) and in the teeth ofrecurring illness.
Leavis's career as a university teacher developed quite slowly.
Some early essays in the Cambridge Reoiew in support of Eliot,_his
pctition to import coPy of the then-banned U/yses for use in lec-
i,rres, and his pamphlet championing D. H. Lawrence (193o)-then
still thought of as n obscene writer*offended influential establish-
,nent figures. A temporary university lectureship at Cambridge
which expired in r93r ws not renewed unti1r93, and then only on a
lrut-time basis.In r93z Leavis published New $earings in Englisb Po-
,'try, which established the cas for Pound and Eliot as major mod-
cr writers; this same year sw the aPPeaance of Q D. Leavis's
I
 INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION
tecl to be disciplines of thought in eir own right, science and.soci-
Fiction and the Reading Pubtic, based on her Ph D' thesis, and
the
con-tinued ety would proieed in a moral vacuum, al1 notion -of "progress" ren-
rri ,*.U., of the qrterly periodical Scrutiry,.wh\c
dred ho[w. These ideas were to be developed in the astonishing
until 1953, run by the Leavises without institutional support DesPlte
sequence of books he published after his retirement, Particulaly
it, sm'cir.,.,1tion and permanent fi nancial ificultres, Scrutinl Diikens the Navelisr (r97o, jointly wi Q D. Leavis), -/or Sball My
Lad decisi't e inflr,.tt.. on literary criticism, nutuing a number of
Sword (tg7z, the text of lectures given at various universities), 7e
distinzuished writers besides the Leavises themselves and helping to
Lhting Pr'intiple: 'English' as a Dixipline of Tltaugbt ftg75, containing
spreaitheir ideas more widely in educational circles'
-i;;; ;^. saved, professionally speaking, by Downing College of a subitantial- new critique of Eliot's Four Quartets), md Thaught'
Wards and Creativity: rt and Tltought in Laturence (1976), which he
Cambridee, which it r93z .l.ct"d him direitor ofStudies in English
saw through the prss in his eightf-rst yer. "Retirement" for him
and in r9] a Fellow. Under the Cambridge system,- colleges are. au-
meant noifreedom from work but new outlets or iq he ws visiting
torro-o inrtitrtions, and Leavis now had a secure base from which
orofessor t the universities of Wales and York (the latter he found
to withstand hostility from the wider university community ln grat-
specially congenial), was Chichele Lectue t Oxfod in ry64, an,
itude he dedicated Rettaluation (r936)-the book that radically reori-
o,rt sense of the Poety of the seventeenth to nineteenth
ih a piquant irony, was invited to deliver the prestigious Clark
"nt, Lecturei at Cambridge in 1965 (pubshed as English Literature in
centuries s Nrzu B earings does for that of the twentieth-to Down-
Our Tine and the (Jniversity, rg7). But ere were sadder episodes:
ins. He remained there-until his retirement in 196z; the University
Leavis resigned his honorary fellowship at Downing when the_ col-
him reader, the next grade below full professor, only in
^Joointed lege appointed as his successor someone whom he felt would not
rij9. Duting thit period, when he *as far more fully involved.in lec-
continue the traditions he had established; and ere wee numeous
inn una imint *ork than most ofhis colleagues, he produced a
quarrels wi, and estrangements from, former friends, coeagues,
strea of books which have become established classics: Educatian
and pupils.
the (Jnirersity $ga), The Great I?adition $g48), Tlte Comnon
'iirruit
and
The bulk.of Lavis's last two years were overshadowed by a rapid decline into
1"r"uyr, r{5rj, uid n. u. to.unce, Noaetist Ggsi old age.InJanuary i978 he was appointed a Companion ofHonor (a
*i. *o ai * prose fiction (together with his wife, Le avis vir-
rare distinction conferred by the queen on the advice ofthe govem-
*[, inu.nt.d the iriticism of rhe novel as we understand it) and
ment of the day but nonpolitical, in recognition ofoutstanding ser-
*ir. .on..p, "nd purpose of the university itself as maintainer of vice in a branch of pubc life), and died on April 14 the same year'
a hish standard of culrural life.
Lterary, educational, and social issues were always interwoven. in QD. Leavis died in r98r. Their children survive them. In obedience
to Leavis's wishes, his estte has refused to sanction an authorized
Leavis's ind. This was shown most powerfully, and publicly, in his
biography, ough several unofficial accounts, of varying reliabty
lecoxe Tqto Culrures? The Signficanrc of C P Szotr, delivered in 196z
and quality, have appeared.
and published to a storm f censorious comment the same year'
Leavis as always aroused polarized reactions. To manfinclud-
Leas had always been a controversial figure in Cambridge,^but this
ing his former pupils, upon whom he left a rtually Socratic imprer
reolv to Snowt wn earlier lecture The Two Cultures and the Scientific
sio-n-he is on oithe greatest teachers and the greatest f.iterary critic
Rleiolution made him a national figure Snowhad deplored the igno-
of this century; to oers, his stndards and judgments rePesent an
rance ofscience flaunted, as he thought, by many "literary intellectu-
unacceptably austere and elitist habit of mind. His perso:rality was
als" and had accused them of being Luddites whose dilettantism
.o-baiire, nd he certainly made enemies; but he has fallen foul of
retarded technological and social progress' Leas's case did not de-
tl.re current dogma that all criticism must be underpinne4 b-y an e.rr-
oend uoon his annihilating Snow's claim to be taken serously as a
'novelisi (though rhis was-the part of Leavis's lecture that aroused plicitly stated eory something he consistendy refused. Perhaps^e
tcst rsponse to detctos is to survey e published edence ofhis
most ind'ignaon t the time)i the, he contended that "there,
is
were admit- ruchicvement. This cannot be dequtely summarized in a short space
only oze clture" and that unless literature and criticism
 INTRODUCTION
but. if pressed, one would want to single out his revaluations o a
hosi of *riterr, preeminently Conrad, Dickens, T S Eliot, Jame s,
and Lawrence; his achievements in the close analysis ofpoetry and
in showing that a gret prose work can be a vehicle of serious
o,rsht c;veved bi"tt"nii"llv poetic means; his vindication of the
authSrity of literatuie and criticiim as autonomous intellectual disci-
plines, distinct from, but no less valid an, those o-philosophy and
'"
sci"rrc"s; his sionary concePtion of the role of the university;
and, in the last phase of his woik, his development-of ideas about
language, meaning, and thought which engage with, while being
fierieli critical of] the work f modern linguistic philosophy and
epistemology. His prose sryle, like his mind and personality- have
oroved inimitable; he has left no successos, no can one lmaglne any
lingle perron in the future changing the couse of an intellectual
discipline as he has done.
Tbe Lioing Principle was published in 1975, its author's eigh-tieth
year.* Therst an third chapters derive from lectures given at York,
bh"pt.r , from a long-running Cambridge course' Sections i, ii, iii,
and v of Chapter z re originally published in Scrutinl under the
running title Judgment and Analysis" and were already classics be-
for. th, ,pptrce in the book, 6ut the really triumphant.achieve-
ment coms in the new mteial. The deliberate and discursive
manner, far rom being distcting, conveys a marvelously- inward
sense of the teacher dmonstrating by example what real thinking
is like.
The nature of thought and language, and the way in which
thoughts are expressed in language, is Leavis's central-peoccuPtion'
Wh insisting he was not writing a philosophical work,-ie was
clearly provod by philosophers, above all- by specialists -on
Wittgenitein such ai David Pars, whose book he cryptically refers
to in-Chapter I; and he enlisted the philosophers Michael Polanyi
and Marjrie Grene in his campaign against the simpli'ing. polar-
izations ;f mind and body, fact and value, objective and subjective,
"The title may derive from Newman's -Ilea of a Unitnsity, Discourse III,
"Bearing of Thelogy on Other Branches of Knowledge": "as in the hurnan
f.ame tfiere is a livil principle, actinq upon it and through it by means ofvoli-
tion, so, behind rhe e'il of e visibli uiue.te, there is an invisible, intelligent
being, acting on and through it, as and when He will." Compare this th the
passage quoted from Coingwood on p. 65.
4
INTRODUCTION
which descend from Descartes. Leas is impatient with the sneer
that terature is a merely subjective expression of feeng, and that
critical analysis (ofwhich he gives a superb ccount on P.35) is sim-
ply the formulation of the critic's personal response, carrying no
firmer authority. He wants to establish literary creation, and critical
actity, s distinct intellecaal dhtipliars while simtaneously avoid-
ing the claim that they can be "scientific" in pretension or method.
He does this by arguing, first, that linguistic philosophy is not lite-
ary analysis, despite the seductive appearnce of kinship; second,
that philosophy offers a falsifiing, because oversimple, account of
language and meaning; and third, at language, literaturc' and criti-
cism are all collaboative human activities belonging to what he des-
ignates "the Third Realm," "the order of being*I say naturally,'the
order of reality'-to which the poem [standing for any creative
work] belongs" (p. 6z).
Language-in-literature, Leas argues, is heuristic (exploratory-
discovering), operating in a social context. Language is not just an
instrumental means oforpression; its users inherit it but also develop
it; and, like liteature and criticism, it is e means of articulating a
personal view which aspires to be more than personal, to communi-
cate within the human world by means of collaboration between
speaker and hearer. Conrad's tale "The Secret Sharer" is interpreted
by Leavis as a parable ofthis joint creation of meaning. Despite e
belief of some that "is is the age when a computer can write a
poem'(p.43), Levis asserts that meaning is an exclusively human
actity-and "lnguage apart from meaning is not languge" (P. 57).
llertand Russell's pursuit, in n Inquiry into Meaning and Trutb
(r94o), of an "object-language" emptied o personal coloration, is
thus seen to be grotesquely misconceived.
gainst such blankness Leas opposes Polanyi's concept of per-
sonality as a mind-body organic whole in which my mind is the
rnind of my body and my body the body of my mind (p. 39). This,
however, does not leave the individual stranded; I cannot ve anyone
clsc's life for them, but obviously I can share a sense oflife with oth-
crs. In the great artists is sharing is at its finest, enabiing them, in
[]lake's terms, to transcend the "selfhood" (the ego) and afirm "iden-
r i ty" (disinterested suprapersonal creativity). The quotations from
Collingwood, Grene, and Polanyi on p. 65 indicate how, within a fi-
rrite and timebound universe, we may experience our personal
,{r'owth as directed by something other than our isolated selves.
 INTRODUCTION
Leavis's basic charge against Eliot, in his discussion ofFoar Q
artets'
the great writels
is at Eliot fell victim to a contradiction: he had
.rr."itv fot id"ntlry, but his ultimate denial of his own creativity, in
frii uroi.w to trrni."nd temPoal limitations, stemmed from an
unassimilaied
--- selhood.
r.rt" of a form analogous to music in the Qaartets ("b\r-he
tiott
wrote it in words-necessarily, the necessity being not.merely that
Eliot was a poet and not a composer," p zz4) shows that "thoughC' in
art does noi hve to be discuisive oi ratiocinative, and the tour de
r., di of the sequence in Chapter 3 develops in detail the
iositions staked out in ihapter r and ixemplified diversely in the
"urrion
nalvses of Chapter z. Not at Leavis judged Eliot's aims to have
beeri realized. Part ofthe problem, as he sees it, is that Eliot snPPoses
himself to be thinking wen in fact he is merely indulging "associa-
tive orocedures" (p. ,i7), seeking by rePetition of such words as "pat-
terni or "stillness-" to convjnce us (vainly) that he is advancing a
ohilosoohical position. Leavis in this section ofthe book is conclud-
irrr , Io'nn ensasement with the Quortets,The first poem to aPPer,
, sef-ioni.d work, was Burnt Nortan, which concluded Ca1-
tieted Poems 4og-r9j5 (1936) and was described by D' W' Harding
in
in e creation of
r-,i. i.ri"* o ,. .it.,io" as 'n achievement
a phrase with which Leavis was to wrestle on more than
"ona"prt,"
or" oi.rrion 1t"", e.g.,PP.7617i. Subsequendy East Caerwas.re-
ewed bv \l H. M.frs,'I'raDrv Sal'vges by Leavis, and Little
Giddincv Hardine aeain. Leavisb other major study of the Quar-
rrrr, prio. io The Liing Princi?le, appearsin Englisb Literature in Our
Time and the Unitersitit.
- Michael Polanyi's 11 thought is incarnate" (quoted on p. 243).
In "T. EliotL Latr Poetry'' Leas considers the challenge-posed
S.
to terarv criticism bv the exiitence oftheological poetry concluding
ih^t .Jlosi.rl .*peitise is ifanything a handicap to appreciation of
e natur" E[oi's work. Atei 'Ash Wednesday'' Eliot's work ap- to aIirm but to deny the physical context of human endeavor. Only
oeared to be "a spiriual discipline, a technique for sincerity--for giv-
ing 'sincerity' a^meaning" (ihough "to judge poetry to b.e sincere
do-esn't amount to endorsing it"-p. zro)' Eot is concerned
to attarn
though neces-
'n apprehension ofan assured realiry-a reality-that,-
Burnt Nor-
sari oorehended in time, is not oit." Leavis describes
workj' "by
i"-" \L, equivalent in poetry of a philosophical doing
strictlv ooetiial means e business of an epistemological and meta-
ohrsii enouirv." He couldrit have been happy wi this description;
i",ty po.ri. -eans" begs a number of qustions-and, in fact' he
6
INTRODUCTION
qualies his remark on p. zo8 of The Living Principb. Leat"ts's tone in
t-his essay is almost wholly positive and welcoming: L;ttl Cid.ding
had yet io appear When it did, Harding diagnosed it as Fliot's re-
coil,'under e "p.ettr,re of urgent misery and self-disgust," against
the soirirual barrenness of humanism. Leavis found this account
misleding (see pp. I7o-r7r). Harding norcd the literalness of many
of Eliott itatements but abstained from discussing how they were
nonetheless poetry: that was ' question outside the range of is re-
view." For Leavis it ws ,r, question.
Eot is committed to demonstrating the unreality ofwhat our age
takes as real; and in this he succeeds' It is when he attemPts to aset
an alternative reality that Leavis takes him to fail: "What [Eliot] as-
sefs about his spiritual quest is worth little; the questing that mattes
is inseparable fiom the arduous cretity" (p. r98), e creativity by
which'"the artist demonstrates his allegiance to what he knows to be
other than himself" (p. zo5-Lawrence and Blake being paradigm
cases in Leavis's mind). Eliot's diagnosis is too personal, though of-
fered as a generalizationl the supreme advocate of impersonality in
artistic creation hs not detached himself su{iciently from his own
problem. Slighting an evolutionary sion of human development,
he takes refuge in denial-in an "essential nihilism'(p' zo3) which
relegates human activity and seeks to fiirm the eternal. But "there is
no acceptable religious position that is not a reinforcement ofhuman
responsibity' (p. 236).
\&ren Eot brings out, in "The Dry Salvages," his presumPtively
demonstrated conclusion, "The hint half guessed, e gift half un-
derstood, is Incarnation," he means something far less tngible an
Leavis, son of Victorian rtionlist, refuses assent, perceiving that
Eliot's rerulsion from the flesh has emptied the term "Incarnatiori' of
any but the most bstact significance, and that he is misusing it not
in the Dantesque passage in Little Gidding-whete Eliot creates an
anti-Cartesian "seret sharer" of his owl through whom he rebukes
himself for his evasions and compromises-do we have anything ke
the impersonty of genius. But it can't be sustained: e last poem
in the sequence, cushioned by the avowal of beliefin the Incarnation
in its predecessor, tails offin detalized fashion'
Wien The Ling Principle appeared t was the focus of an
eightie-birthday tribute issue of Neu Unittersities Qaarter\. Leat'ts
 INTRODUCTION
was induced, somewht reluctantly, to rePly to his critics in-an arti-
.i., ;r*"y N.cessary." Concentrating n th.e essay by Michael
Tanner, Leavls restates in economical form the leading ideas
of his
;ri;il;,;;g the intriguing detail that some of the details in the
uri..u. seciion of Liite diddirg *"r" taken from a conversation Preface
between himself and Eliot when the poet paid his one visit to
Leavis's house in the early r94os. Leavis'i involvement with Eliot
in
The Lioin Prindble has personal edge absent in his earlier work'
uwhat is under
As Profeslor Sinih remarks in his biography, here
f AM not intending to say in preacing this book anything that is
scrutinv is ,rot orih *hat Eliot believes and is, but also what Leavis
i;r-rrn Aairr"" is." Unlike Eot's, Leavis's affirmations are deli- I not said in the body of it. But it is desirable, if only for e sake
^ia of the purpose I do entertain, at no reader all expect something
.at. Jnd ,"ti..nt; they are implicit, and he nowhere forces.his.per-
sonal beliefs uoon thereader. Nonetheless,The Lioing Princi|le is
hs of a kind at is not ofered, or impute to me an exPecttion that is
summa. he bok in which, for the last time with full vigor, he ex- not mine. In the nature bo ofwhat I do ofier and of e civilization
in which we live I should be foolish to count on a readiness to conceive
po..nd, hi. ,i"* of humanity, language, and art.
e purpose, and, where initial sympathy is lacking, mismnception
might be all too readily allowed to prevail. My point is that what I
have in view entails a radical challenge to modern habits ofasumPtion'
and even many who are not unsymPathetic to my judgments will ask
-realisticzlly, ey feel-what I hope to effect, implying that the
batde I wage is a hopeless one.
Let me say then at I know at it would be mere dream-indulgence
to suppose that we might establish a university answering to the ideal
implicit in my argument. I see little prospect of there being in any
university an English Sool o which (say) half of the teaching staff
were qualified to work in te spirit of my suggestions. Then ere is
e egalitarian tidal-rave and its consequences; where such student-
numbers are to be dealt with, and the belief that sandards really
matter fights a losing batde against 'democracy' and enlightenment,
tlenotion of the university's human function at I advance is
paetically remote from posible realization. And, actually, in e
following pages I disclaim e intention osketching 'honours' courses,
or drawing up syllabuses for institutional endorsement.
Yet, ough I know this realism to be necessary that doesn't mean
that I tink the realism that depresses sap all. The massively ignored
human need in su an ge as ours achieves self-recognition and
voices in te relatively very few; but-as I have said before-the
measure of importance in is realm is not quantitative; decisive
changes of consciousness are initiated by tiny minorities: our civiliza-
tion affords much excuse for dwelling on ooe truths. But actually,
 THE LIVING ?RINCIPLE
though out ofgrounded conviction I adhere to tiem, it was not, a I
acqulred the eiperience that constituted e grounds, a-sense of e
potential community as tiny-the community sympathetic to my
concern-that I found myselfiorming. My view, insistently conveyed,
of the way in which we must counter the malady under - which
mankind wilts has never had to overcome any discouraging lack of
responsive students-f mean my view as implicit in my assumptions
abut the kind of work worth doing and the seriousnes of the interest
I could count on. And this remains tue after the years of rapid
expansion have congested the multiplied universities wi telly- and
pin-table-addicted non-students, thus making posible e presure
ior 'participation' and the careers of student-union politicians' And
at nearly all the universities with which I am acquainted (for the most
part, inevitably, in a casual and external way) I have encountered-at
itaff-level men intent on taking their vocational responsibilities
seriously-as far as academic requirements and expectations -and
determining conditions allowed. Where there are such men and (as
at every plice ere are) students who know, if in a vague YlIr -*ht
th"y ougit to be getting rom a university, ere are posibilities o
colubotiue oppounis-and here and there, perhaps, of more.
To point to iuch possibilities may seem poor way of proceeding
to justiy the kind of book I have written. That may be soi our
civilization, outwardly cock-a-hoop and at heart despairing, expresses
itself characteristically in unbelieving reactions of that kind' But what
is rejected, or at leasi not shared, is belief in realities that alone justifr
hop-the hope at means responsible eflort. The belief I am thinking
ofintails the perception that e despair, or Yacuous unease, charac-
teristic of the- civilized world comes of proound human needs and
capacities that the civilization denies and thwarts, seeming-paraly-
singly-to have eliminated in its triumph all posibility 9! lerygeng'
such , strte e necessary reaction is that with whi the poli-
tician's maxim should be me{ 'We create posibility': opportunities
taken, or made, in e spirit I invoke would elicit manifest proof of
the human realities we must count on. This is not lighdy asserted;
behind the certitude there is a life's experience. But e assertion
itself will hardly be dismised as paradoxical. What does need insisting
on is e significance, the imperative authority, of the tru involv-ed.
Proof everion a small scale is proof, and e scale of ttre immeate
manifesation tells us nothing about e range and magnitude of its
possible efiects-efrects of influence and suggestive stimulus' This is
IO
PREFACE
justication enough-if justificztion were needed-of the reasoned
and variously enforced case for a given kind of sustained creative
effort-one articulately conscious of its nature and necessity-that I
have ofiered to present in is book.
The potential human response is there; the calculated presentment
of the elaborated case is necessary. The individual opportunist needs
to feel that he is not alone, unsupported and heroically casual. But,
though my aim is to present a conception of the univenity's c-onsti-
tutiv funition as being to create and maintain an educated public, I
mustn't seem to imply that the audience I think ofmyselfas addresing
is confined to the university. That conception is not quite so remote
from imaginable possibility as it might seem because, as thing are,
the need is conscious already in a minority of individuals that is
substantial enough to be thought of as a nucleus of the influential
public we disastrously lack. But ey are not a public; they replesent
nly " mrkings ofa public. A real public, one capable of having the
least influence of the kind needed, would have some consciousnes
of itself as one.
The way in which te age discourages such a posibility may be
discreetly intimated by a reerence to The Times, a paper which
consciously addresses itself to e educated, has clearly a given k]1!
of concern for civilized standards, and, with a circulation that falls
decidedly short of a million, has contrived-or been enabled-to
persist its letter page is something to be grateful for. But though it
prints a few reviews, such literary reviewing as it does can be dismissed
s serving no critical function. The very choice of e books to be
reviewed looks like mere caprice, though inquiry might reveal some
canny motivation. The fact is at in the world of triumphant
modrnity, e world of power-centres from which the quantity-
addicted machinery ofcivilization is controlled, directed and exploited
literature in e old sense has ceased to matter. I mean at when the
public capable of discerning genuinely nerr creativity disappears the
guides in whom tle existence of the public is manifest disappear too.
Non-quantitative critical sandards efiectively exist only in a public
whicll capable of responding to them when ey are critically appealed
to, is in that sense 'educated', and where ere are no sandards
literature has ceased to matter-has cexed, in efect, to exist' The
BBC looks after culture, and e high-brow Programme brings
togeer under its Palladian aegis a reading from St Mattheq a
p"rfor^"rr." of the St Matthew Passion, and Mr Kingsley Amis
tt
 PRE I'ACE
THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
paid for doing so)' ance it may advance by standing, genuinely and consciously, for a
advertising, by reading from it (and no doubt being
gift' distinctive iscipline of intelligence. The new insistence was prompted
e latest prouct of his distinctive -
I sav nthine about the more e<pensive Sunday papers, where trre ' the Wittgensteinians.
by
e literary world go about their. busines' nor Wittgenstein's later philosophy is known as a 'linguistiC philosophy,
tite, r coteri, of
phenomenon' and the Wittgensteinians in asuming that the concePtion of language
about that (from the critical point of view) closely related
as I write, makes a Pomt-of implicit in te adjective is ordinary-or sufrciently non-specialized
The Tinx' Literarl Supphment-which,
to be acceptable to non-philosophers-have (or ink ey have) Pretty
.*if"ii" ttt"t Ui aL is modern literature and the late W'is H' obviously the master's authority for te assumption' Whether or not
rJJ" i .r;ot poet and a mind of world importance' There no
(and it siems to me doubtful) he would have encouraged the idea of
need here foi a full account of our cultural plight'
I am merelv underlining the constatation that such elements as arranging seminars on his philosophy for literary students, he was in
his sophisticated way comparatively naive, I think, about language,
*rv of a potential pulic representing sandards are' !y reason
"*i.t .,,l-ti*l insignificance, non-existent for adv-erthing- and that is the aspect of the objection to the idea-for I aza opposed
oi'th"i, are to it-which it is in place to stress here' The naivety would hardly
.rr,"*r. and editors-evin where the 'intellectual' weeklies
no com- be made les uncondonable by most of the expositors whom literary
...,r,"""^ed the literarv editors of which have, in any case,
students would have to depend on; it would almost inevitably be
r.ii;rn *tiir. for questioning e coterie-established reputations)' more obvious-and one can imagine posible educational profit for
Tir", -" i"t-ia"ble facts; th problem they Portend has to be. faced
some lterary studens in at. But the emphasis in place here is that
realistically, and, if the line of ought I stand for were to tell-rn
any
the convinced, much considerrng the nriyety is inadequacy, and e inadequacy falsifying in a way
decisive wy, there would be, among
inimical to thought (if, at is, it doesn't precipitate a recoil, which is
and testing'of the prompted dispositions and measures' I
myselt see as
" Urti"t ;" ,friJ boo to present wit all e cogency I can achieve hardly what the Wittgensteinians anticipate).
of the cultural contrn- Inielligent ought about the nature of thought and the criteria of
'e fult necesity of a living creative literature,
ohi.t .h"."-ott be no valid criteria of the humanly good inking is impossible apart from intelligence about the nature
"i* -i.*
iip.t"* kind, and of the cultural habit now implicitly repudi- f hnguag", and the necesary intelligence about language involves
-1, an intimate acquaintance with a subtle language in its fullest use.
ri"JU",il by The Tin* and the intellectual weeklies-the habit that
th", there was some vital touch and communication be- English is a subtle language; its literature is very rich, and its continuity
on." -*n tradi- stretches over centuries, starting long before the great seventeenth-
*""" " "*pA.r.e and sensibility represented.by a.l iving.literary
and political century change; so there is point in saying that for the English-
;;;,h;;r" hand, and, on th oer, te iniellectual
of speaking philosopher e fullest use of language ought to be its use
ili;;;h" A"' Such communication must depend on eexistence the con- by the creative writers of his own time, and he needs to take full
ir,fl,,"ntiil ,nd truly cultivated public-a public in which
"i
tinuity
----i has a Potent life'
cognizance of is truth,
tu" .*pl""a these convictions before' But the emphasis in these Ihave intimated something, tlen, about my reasons for insisting
*iff bL fourd, I ink, to be a not altogether familiar one' It that the critical discipline-te distinctive discipline of university
"rro
n-oit. *t t in,"n (e insistence on it, at any rate, is a development) 'English'-is a discipline of intelligence, and for being explicit and
", tofundamentalsl which is not to say that' in this' T repetitive in associating the word 'intelligence' wi the word 'ought'.
,. fresh
" "pproach concerned with what, practiclly, caz be done: in As for 'discipline', f am sure that tht is the right word, though the
]t"it"." -r"ft training that justifies it in the given use is a training in delicacy of
.,, i ao"' L** t ow, in su a matter, there could be an19epa1ti3n'
ii" .irf,*it mav be felt in the repetition of the word 'thoughC' asI perception, in supple responsiveness, in the wariness of conceptual
rigidity that goes with a Blakean addiction to the concrete and parti-
have of course in the past spoken habitually of creative -writers.
cular, and in readiness to take unforeseen significances and what is so
beins. in maior works, unmistakably concerned with heuristic thought'
justify any claim to imPort- unprecedented as to be new. By way of emphasizing that 'discipline'
and i univrsity 'English' as needing to
t2 r3
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
I will sum up by saying that itis a training in
is the right word
I dene in te first
responsibflity-'responsibility' having the force
pait of this took by adducing Conrad's 'The Secret Sharer''
Having said thi; I will g; on to say furer at the discipline is a
training i"n fidelity to-whlch must bL delicate apprehension of-the
living irinciple. ft is not an overstatement at misleads to say that
the hol" oi this book (in which I say something about -what'to
mean' means) is devoted to dening what I mean-by 't}e living
principle'. Tere would be no point, then, in-my ofiering. to give a
.r-*"rv of te meaning here. As, however, e sentence before te
last intiates (in spite of-a possible suggestion ofthe word'dening'),
the 'principle'' in qrestion is not abstract, and no context of theory
d"fin. iti the word has e force it has when one says:'this
"orld
seed has in it ttre principle of life'. The living principle is a concrete
someing apprehenrled but indefinable. Since, then, I am committed
to rliscursi"#exposition I am faced wi a difficult problem,of meod,
one that the bok attempts to solve. That exPlains what will for some
readers be its disconcerti;g oddities ofstructue, sequence and inclusion-'
In anv case it needs (as ofaoro.,ny.utt ined argument does-but I
a- cnrcious of giving some rude jolts to habits of-expecution) a
collaborative reader. So the business I see as mine ot worklng rnto
mv arsument wi anticipatory hints cannot begin too early'
'Thi"nki"g ou". rny pro-bl"rn, I recalled at phrase of Lawr-enceh,
'intuitive-
the living faculty'. I must quote the paragraph of La.dy
Chattcrlels Lozter in whii)t (with the variant, 'te human intuitive
faculty') it comes:
The car ploughed uphill through the long squalid straggle-of Tevenhall'
te blackened brick dwellings, the black slate roo' glrstenrng thell
sharp edges, the mud, blac} with coal-dust, the Paveoent r&et and black'
It ws as-if dismalness had soaked through and though everything' The
utter negatiou ofnatural beauty, the utter negation of the gladness oflife,
e utteiabsence of the instinct for shapely biauty whi every bird-anil
beast has, e utter death of the huoan intuitive faculty was appallng'
The staclis of soap in e glocers' shops, the rLubarb and' lemons in e
greengrocers'l thJ awfd ts in the milliner's! all went by, ugly,-lgl.y'
ig1y, gln followed by the plaster'and-gilt horror of e cinema wi.its
*li pi.irr" ,ttooor""ment; 'A wona;' Love!' and the new Primitive
chapel, prioitive enough in its stark brick and big panes ofgreenish and
r"sfU"try gt"s. i" tLe iviodows. . - . Stanilard Five girls were having
just fihing the la'me-doh-la exercises aad beginning
tiniog i"ton,
,+
PREFACE
'sweet children's song'. Anling more unlike song, Pontaneous song,
woulil be impossible to imagine: a stlange bawDg yell that follo:red
the ounes oia mne. It was not like savages: savages have subde rhyt}ms'
It was not ke animals i arlifials rl,4r, sonething when they ye' It was
ke uothing on earth and it was called singing. Connie listened with..her
heart in hr boos, as Field was filling petrol. What could possibly
become of such a people; a people in whom the ving intuitive faculty
was dead as nails,-an only quer mechanical yells anil uncanuy will-
power rernainedl
Of course, in the short half-century since Lawrence wrote this,
things have anged--civilization has advanced; but I don't ink that
anv ieader capabl of taking, in relation to Lawrence's preoccupation,
th point of that paragrapl would say that the anges had at all
tendd to revive'tle living intuitive faculty'. 'Spontaneous' is an
important word in the passrge, and one of e consequences of e
at it tlan itwas to guard tIe
advance is has become more necessary
idea of spontaneity ginst reductive assumptions that cerainly don't
enter int the mening of'spontaneous' as Lawrence uses the word'
A talented artist, a genuinely creative writer, has to learn to be
spontaneousi procrsses f training and education are required before
he knows wht his spontaneity is and can tell with sureness what it
dictates. Blake was emphasizing his spontaneity when, referring to
wor}s of his own (at which he had laboured, altering and redrafting),
he said: 'Tho' I call them Mine, I know tht they are not Mine"
'The living intuitive faculty' of ttre passage from Lawrence's lovel
intuits proptings at, foi those who have it, are 'not eirs'-not
promptings;f 'w-ill, ego and idea',* nor of the telly, the great modern
aootio*t gent, trnsmitting, along wi commercially interested
pressures, the-commercialized iechnologico-cultural-manifestations of
i.[orth America, where 'the living intuitive faculty' is so dead that e
phrase had no meaning there even when Lawrence wrote.
-
The authority he invokes with the phrase may be said to -be -lifq
or the potency at e source of life-for this agin is a word of-whi
(a measure oi its inspensablenes) it is more difficult to de6.ne or
rpUi" tfr" force an most peoPle, even philosophers, normally
reiognize: ey feel that tley know well enough what it means.-But
I doln't by quting at passage of Lawrence's establish what force
'e livin[ piinciple', as I use tle Phase, must be recognized to have.
a
a .A disactive and sigddcalt triad id l-arcuce's discunive rting'
r5
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
is very far from being a matterofstraigldorward denitionl
That too
it involves, in iact, what I may call the'logic'ofthe whole book'
I bring in the word 'logic; here as Part of my insistence
-
on the
propriety"ofmy *ay of using the word 'ougtrt' and on e cogency I
t i" my mode of argument' The mode is not, it seems to me,
philosophical;'it would be misrepresented by calling it tlat' It occlrs
"spir"
io me t say this because othe assurance f received from a philosopher
who harl written to tell me that he and friends of his had been for
some time interested in my work as being distinctly relevant to
philosophic preoccupations ey had in common. In reply I said., not
?I insist) in- pr.. modestv, tht I wasn't a philosopher, and didn't
itri.,t o *yi"tf as one This drew from him, in a further very
courteous and considerate letter, the following:
You do yourselfless an justice when claiming to be not a PhilosoPher'
The probleros with which you are deang when considering such things
as th; autonomy ofthe human world and how we should see our relations
to it ara philosophical questions: and I think you would !9 wron-g.to
heecl the'views of techuical-mindeil philosophers who wish to daio
that philosophy is a subject onl)' for erperts who in the wisdom deal
with problems too soPhisticated for e ron'expert, and who have, m
nearly succeeded in making professional philo'sophy.an
"orrr"{u"n"",
area th nothing- to sa/ to the man faced with real philosophical
problems.
This, while I hold to it that I don't deserve the imputation of modesty
with which it opens, seems to me admirable, and gives 1" qeat
pleasure. It gives me pleasure because, coming f1om.a nh-if1;on|1,
it iustifies me-in positinq the co-presence in the university of 'English'
w philosophy'as, pioperly, ben"fit to bo-justifies-. me..by book is one at will in any case repay my students' close attention.'
evirlerrcing in so a way that the philosophical discipline
""miit"t<tUl
mav issue"in concern for a kind of-thought such as might stimulate,
in the field of te other discipline'
an might strengthen, thinking
I a::i t"ft, th, insisting on e'other discipline" What I find it
relevant to My immediatelf is that the mode of argument by.which.I
endeavour to Lxplain and enforce that insistence seems to me decidedly
not a philosophr's. Its affnity is rather-and pPropriately-with e need so well.
otheran-piilosophical discipline for whi I aim at getting
recogr,itioni I
have to justi my contention about -the humanly
necelsary kind of thoughi thaiis h;dly recognized-at-all as at, and,
in cloinj so, to comrnir,ic"te to others my firm belief that something
relevani cn be donei t}tat is, I am cncerned-inseparably-wi elaborates-at in his culrninating creative work the thought to which
r6
PREF'CB
practicality and with persuasion to directed energizing. The ought
slighted by our civilization cannot have e needed vitalityand influence
witout an educated public and in explaining is I define what
'educated public' means. This entails some reference to the idea and
function of tle university. Not that I entertain hopes of redeeming
in terms of the 'idea' the modern 'democratic' university. Hope lies
in opportunism-opportunism combined with a firm concePtioni and
it is reasonable to believe at opportunities will be found-opportun-
ities, quantitatively dismissible, to be snatched on tle margins or in
the interstices of the institutional going concern. My business is to
suggest convincingly how by such opportunism e idea might be
kept alive, propagated, and here and there nursed into striking root;
in the process strengthening the actual elemens ofan educated public
by fostering new consciousness and so life.
I have had no tought ofdrawing up a model syllabus, but I couldn't
efrectively serve the purpose I have tried to define, and develop e
enailed argument, whi of its nature transcends e dispassionately
demonstrative or merely eoretical, without resorting continually to
e concrete; hence my use, in e 6nt part, of A-ndreski's book,
Marjorie Grene's and Ian Robinson's, as well as, for e given
definitive purpose, of Conrad's short story. My purpose in general
may be called responsible exemplification, and 'responsible' implies a
pondered finality of judgment. But 'finality' is not an unambiguous
word. I do indeed ink that 'The Secret Sharer' makes the point at
issue wi a felicity at is unsurpassable, if not incomparable. But
where e books are in question my use of tlem means: 'This serves
my argument well and I judge with complete responsibility tl-rat the
'Pondered finality' here means at I haven't thought it likely that I
should have, as the result ofdissentient rePresentations, to abandon my
judgment at the book is very suiable for ttre kind ofuse I propose-
though I know tere is nothing final about my list. Yet, as I avow,
where Marjorie Grene's The Kxower and the 1(zaruz is in question I
can't imagine ere could be any substitute that served e given
In saying at, I don't think I can be convicted of misjudgment
regarding e use I envisage for Foff Qaartet I rest my confidence,
not only upon the hardly disputable fact that Eliot is our last (and
recent) major poet, but upon the judgment-which my ird part
t7
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
he devotes his genius focuses the student's mind on the basic problem
challenging hrimanity in our present civilization. The 'buts'and
limitin[ju'dgments t which any serious reader is compelled are far
from diminiing the importance of Eliot and his paradoxical creativity:
the kind of stuent I iondition for (and count on) will very often
have Faur Quartcts in front of him, and my discusion -of that work
implies th# the reader, in order to foliow and check, will refer
I
continually to the full poetic text.

Thought, Language and

Objectivity
rlrnrs is not the book I have been often reproached with having
I promised a quarter ofa century ago, and never having produced.
'Judgment and Analysis' was te heading I put over some of the
intended contents when they were printed in 9cnrtiry. I had coined
the phrase as a substitute for'Practical Criticism'. 'Practical
Criticism', I used to tell my lecture audiences and tle undergradutes
who worked with me at my college 'is criticism in practice, and we
are engaged in that when, for insance, we decide that a novel is good,
give our grounds for the judgment, and put te case with care, or
when we inquire into the justice or otherwise of Eliot's conclusion,
Hamlet beingin question, that "the play is most certainly an artistic
failure".'I didn't, that is, like e implication-it had come to inhere
in e formula-that 'Practicl Criticism' was a specialized kind of
gymnastic skill to be cultivated and practised as something aPart' The
influence of tat idea, I ttrought, was to be seen in Tillyard's odd and
ominous tribute to Smen T12es of ,lnbiguitl-Poetry Dirut and
Oblique.
In any case, I knew at tess of perception and sensibility and
exercises in judgment and anal)'sis should be-and should deserve to
be-thought ofas fostering the kind of intelligence in the training of
which a university English School that deserved to exist and be
respected would see the work of its j ustifying discipline'
Of course, as this last sentence shows, I raised for myself wi at
conclusion, and recognized at I was raising problems of thought as
well as of practice: 'English' is at e oer extreme from Matlematics.
r8 r9

THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
One can more readily talk in a descriptive and definitive way of
e kincl of intelligenie than begin to define the discipline. There
can be no equivalnt o Prineipia Mathematita. Nevenheless' it is
politic to insist on 'discipline', and necssry to be able to justify- e
insistence-so imporant is the kind ofintelligence in the present phase
of human history, when Lord Robbins, surveying the needs of educa-
tion at the univrsity level, recognizes tlut the natural sciences must
be complemented by e study o husun nature and brings out the
force oi thi" t".ogttition by pointing to p,sychology and the- social
sciences. These ardisciplines; his concessive gesture towards Liter-
ture and the Arts makes it plain that they are to be regarded as pleasing
adjuncts to what really matters-graces and adornments in the margin
of lif" r. shouldn'i be discouraged: they contribute dignity and
amenity.
Wht we have to get essential recognition for is that mjor cretive
writers are with a necessary kind of thought. To such
"onc"tnd
recoqnition the climate of our age is hostile, the hostility being a
meaiure of the importance at is denied. Where the hostility prevails,
thought is disable or the performance of an indispensable function,
the cintral one. The slightd truths are implicit in my insistence at
'English' should represent, and be recognized to represent, a discipline
sai ierzerh-z discipline of intelligence. There will be no- neat and
finai account of ihe distinctive discipline, but the need and e
challenge to define and re-define will always be there' - For. e
orobles-decidedly in the plural here-that present temselves in so
iormidable a way a'ncl so inexorably as practical ones involve te-ntativl
ness, incompletness and compromise so inescapably that the -ends
'i livine principle') that, together with the ahnang implicit in em,
nould gi'e efecs theit-meaning will be lost if practice is not use o the institutional machinery, of e influence and of the power.
associ"td with thought that renews and reformulates. By slipping in
after 'encls' that briefparenthetic phrase I meant to intimate that what
one for this, for thai or for the other directing purpose necessarily
emphasizes as an end in view gets its full significance from a totality
of pprehension and concern, and that the complex -totality is a- vial
uni It seems to me important to think of is kind of unity as
hardlv distineuishable from the principle that ma.kes it ,,,, 'principle'
here mplyin! an energy that, representing a nisus tlt has- maintained
a creti;; tinuity ?rom human beginnings and goes back to the
source, impels, directs and controls.
Th word is bo a reminder and a mandate' In this use, then, it
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
doesnt imply the abstract or e merely eoretic. The ought in
question for us, vindicators of 'English', is, as I have said, antieti-
cally remote from mathematicsi it involves a consciousnes of one's
firll human responsibility, purpose, and the whole range of human
lzluations. Thought of tat order, if it is to matter in the world
of practice, must, one might suppose, be collaborative and continuous
in some relevant community-in tle firct place, e community of
those responsible and practically engaged in a university English
School. nd in any case one needs hope and t lest moral suPPort.
It was not, however, for noting at I spoke, a page or so back, of
'having raised problems of thought and practice for myself'.
What we have to get recognition for is that major creative writers
are concerned wit thought, and such recognition entails e realization
that the thought is of an essential kind. In relation to ose who,
having power in Cambridge 'English', may be called those responsiblg
I found myself very much alone, In fact, to insist on raising the
problems I have pointed to and keeping em, by discusion and
exploratory practice, exposed as problems was, it had to be recognized,
an insufierable ofience-one tat deserved all the posible not grossly
scandalous rigours of discouragement (and scandalousnes is a matter
of reigning convention). Yet, as I have recorded in e introduction
to my published Clark Lectures*, te English Tripos had started very
promisingly. I also record ere that when the facu structure was
set up in 1927 the natural ward-boses, who were well prepared to
take their opportunities, took em, and had a rapid triumph at was
I I
almost complete. refer again to that history as know it because
of is significance for my eme: te promise of e sart was accidenali
the hostility that killed e promise gives us e academic etos we
must count on, and the spirit that, miracles aside, 'ill be strong in the
Here we have one of the considerations that determine dre attitude
at, in e following pages, I assume as the right one: a non-acceptance
o defeat that is as far from optimism as a positive attitude can be and,
remain undespairing.
I can now go on to say that not everying in that early history
simply and merely lends itself to the case for pessimism, even though
to adduce e conditions out of which Scrutirl grew'for $crutin1
really was, ough to say it was once bad form, an achievement ofthe
. E dirh Uteralarc iz Our Time aad the Urriqrertrt.
2t
 THE LIVING PRINCI?LE
old Cambridge-is to emphasize the rapid change that eliminated them.
It was a vanishing Cambridge t)tzt Scrutiny stood for, and e twenty-
years battle for survival was a batde against a new and triumphant
cademic institutionalism, e new kind of enemy this bred and
empowered, and te whole massive movement o civilization. Yet
for twenty years tie life persisted, not unlcnown to the world at large
or fruitless, and a decade after the kill the Cambridge University Press
put te rep nted ofience into world-wide circulation: the unorgivable
had become bo clasical and indispensable.
The elimination of e conditions at had made e twenty years
possible certainly doesnnt favour buolznt assumptions. I recognize
at-though not merely that-when I set mysel to explaining why
ttris is not e book I started writing in the Scrutiny da1,s' Twenty
years ago, the first reason I should probably have given for not having
gone on to complete the book would have been that there was so
I
much else to do. had by then written a good deal of extended
criticism-critiques of Shakespeare plays and of works by major
I
novelists. had even, in Revolaation, tried to suggest the kind of
continuity of relation ere ought to be between the work done under
Judgment and Analysis' and the student's dealings with literary
history. In fact, presed further by e questioner, I might have
followed up the first reason wi te confession that the will to carry
out the original plan was not as strong as it had once been, and at
what had been growing was my sense that e proPer continuation of
Judgment and Analysis'-for the kind of illustrative demonsttion
printed in Seriny could hardly be 'completed'-was actually repre-
sented by 'extended criticism', of which, in great diversity, there was
so much asking to be done.
At tis point I have to invoke again the Cambridge context
implicit in Soztiny.l am not going to enlarge on it; merely to offer
an immediately relevant note regarding my work as supervisor and
.ecturer for the English Tripos. I did my 'supervising' as a College
oficer, both responsible and independent in relation to the studies
of men 'reading English' at the College. The lectures, including a
course of 'Judgment and Analysis', were given to a large university
audience in which most of my own undergraduates would be present,
being aware of the bearing of the lectures on college 'supervision'.
This last term covers frequent meetings wi students-meetings
varying as to the number of students involved, college autonomy
favouring fleble arrangements and the necesary opportunism.
22
THOUGHT, LNGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
In supewision, the boundary between Judgment and Analysis' and
extende criticism could disappear; it became obviously a working
convention, One might work through (say) Meawre for Measure or
t{*on1 and Cleo4atra, and if one couldn't in the same way work
throtgh Little Dorrit or Women in Love, one could, in the discussion
of a given great novel that one had the best of reasons for knowing
well, foster understanding of the way in which tentative observations
and local close criticism develop into a precise critical argument and
tle careful comprehensiveness ofa written critique. 'Practical criticism
is criticism in practice'-the signicance ofthat insistence had frequent
and varied demonstration.
The Cambridge that made such attemPts to presewe and develop
the heritage possible (two verbs for the one process-but neither is
redundant) has vanished into e Past-into oblivion, so far as te
English School is concerned. How little this account e).aggelates was
apprent in a document ofrcially circulated not long ago. In it a
prminent member of e Faculty-he has since risen to a proessorial
hair-proposed e elimination of 'Practical Criticism' from among
e papers set for the English Tripos. It is the reasons he gave that,
in eir naive explicitnes, impress me as peculiarly significant. He
insisted that the paper, together with the concern for the kind of
work it was designed to promote, was out of date-a now pointless
ieritance from the past, so much had things changed. One very
rele nt aspect of e change he was not explicit about: 'student
participation'. The student politicians active in zeal for this are a
imall minority of e whole student body but have democratic allies
in tle senior'world who know that e concern to enorce serious
academic stanclards is looked on'politically'as repugnant to democrcy.
But the signicance immediately in point resides, te don in question
being a leading intellectual of 'Cambridge English', in his notio-n of
that past which he judged to be irrelerrnt, and his account of the
change at had robbed Practical Criticism o a raison d'trc.
H seemed to think at, even if I couldn't be properly said to
have invented Practical Criticism, I had had a large part in the
invention, or at least in e imposition. He certainly wished to impute
to me a major responsibility for its persistence as an incubus after tle
case for it had lapsed. That case, he intimated, with e confidence
of one who invokes e obvious, belonged to e decade in which
Eliot and Joyce made eir impact, and the new in literature Presnted
(as Donne, period cult, did too) a kind of intellectual frculty that
23
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
challenged close local ttention and e ability to demonstrate e of literature is like, and tJreir indifference to e real problems that
adequacy of one's reading in anal;,tic comment on passages. Creative
fashions having changed, and students' taste having little in common
with the taste of at past era, it had become poindess, and rporse, to
annoy them with e Practical Criticism kind of exercise.
Actually, e need to cultivate the power of dose and sensitive
perception and response in the way tlat became known as Practical
Criticism had received decisive recognition in te earliest dap of e
English Tripos-well before e publication of The Waste Land
(tgzz), when Eliot first became a contemporary value (ttrough
contempt prevailed for years in the academic world), or the start of
e at first clandestine culr. o Uues. Work for the tripos began in
rg r 7, and I have, in the introduction to my published Clark Lectues,
put on record what university 'English' owes to the fact at for e
opening years tie staff of the English School (ere was no faculty)
consisted of Manseld D. Forbes, a man of intelligence, disinterested-
ness and courage such as institutional 'English' at Cambridge has made
itself safe against. The emphasis falls, then, not on e historical
ignorance as such, but on the utter unawareness revealed by a leang
intellectual of the English School of te nature of intelligent literary
study-that is, of the nature o literature itself.
But of course the fact of a revelation of that kind made in such a
way is itself history-and it is for us usefully symbolic; the academic
in question has his representative significance-what he represens
being Professor Plumb's 'death of the past'. The changes at have
taken place since I coined e phrase, Judgment and Analireis',
explain sufficiently my neglect to go on with the promised bool, and
why there can be no question of my doing so. The problem now
facing one takes the form of a transmuted world so essentially hostile
tlat one has to be, in one's response to it, always fully conscious of
te basic apprehensions tat make one resolute in resisting explicit
and insistent about them, and, ough unsanguine, unmistakably
positive in the mode of one's resistance-the resistance one aims at
fostering (where it raz be fostered). A patent manifestation of major
change is the immense, the monsous, industry of book-manufacture
addresed to the vast new student+opulace that has been created-
irreversibly, it is to be feared-in so short a time. So ar as'English'
is concerned, by far the greater part of e annual smother ofaids to
study is e work of authors or compilers, university teachers them-
selves, who betray eir blank ignorance of what e protable study
24
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
face all literary students.
What, when I recall e old project, alone can seem worth while
at e moment of history characterized by this industrial avalanche is
the clear, challenging and comprehensive manifesto-the most telling
presentment one can achieve of a complex totalityi a presentment
referable to as te 'idea', though 'idea' hardly suggests strongly enough
e concreteness of the evocation I have in mind as the necessary kind
of argument-te unsetding representation of acts and basic human
needs tat determines judgment Positively.
There is no simple prescription to offer, nothing simple to be said.
My note is perhaps more solemn than Professor Andreski's, but not
out of resonance with it or more serious-I quote from his Social
Sciences as Sorcery, abook that bears closely on my own concern:
I do not etrvisage that ttris blast ofmy trumpet will bring down the walls
of pseudo-science, which are manned by too many stout defenders: the
slaves ofroutine who (to use Bertrand Russell's erpression) 'woulcl raer
die than think', oercenary go-getters, docile ed.ucational employees who
judge ideas by the status oftheir propounde$, or the wooUy Eirded lost
souls yearning for gurus. Nevertheless, despite the advanced stage of
cretinization whi our civilization has reacheil under the impact of the
oass media, ere are still People about who like to use their brains
without the lure of material gain; and it is for them that tlis book is
intended. But if tley are in a minority, then how can truth prevaill
The answer (which gives some ground for hope) is that people interesteil
in ideas, and prepared to ink them through anil express them regardless
of personal disadvantage, have alwals been few; and if knowledge coulil
not aalvance without a majority or the right side, tere woulil never
have been any progress at all-because it is always easier to get into e
melight, as well as to mahe monen b/ charlatanry doctrinairism,
sycophancy and sooing or stirring oratory than by logical and feadess
thinking, No, e reason wby human understalding has been able to
advance in the past, and may do so in e future, i that true irsights are
cumulave and retain eir value regardle.ss of what happens to their
discoverers . , . AnywaS 1et us uot dePair.
The book is a valuable one for my purposq nd recommend it I
to e minority who find, or make, openings for the kind of opportun-
ism c,n which hope in the university depends. It
is a canclusive
commentary on Lord Robbins's faith in the Social Sciences and
psychology, and it has a close bearing on the concerr at e+laim
my emphasis on 'distinctive discipline' and te 'living principle' which
25
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
that the evidence he presents is even more alarming
I think
this serves.
but at least he gives one e oPportunity to rnsrst
than he recognizes,
with renewe point on the greater menace which he doesn't consider
before commitiing himself io his exhortation: 'Anyway, let us not
despair.'
'i^he process of 'cretinization' is lethal in a way he doesn't suggest:
actuallv the 'mass media', representing our cretinized and cretinizing
civilizition, are working desiructively with a success that, if tley are
oo.i,iufu-*f,ich w"ould be creaiively-countered, and countered
".i
with inte)lignce, devoted pertinacity, and faith, will put an end to the
verv conditions of what he hopes to preserve, seemlng conhdent, ror
all ris erplicit pessimism, that they can in any- case apreserved' Not
onlv is his conception of'thought' too restrictlvei e assumptlons
reference to'e riason why human understanding has
imilicit in his
ben able to advance in the past, and may do so in the futue'ale
unrealistic and too'easy, Th 'dear inking'that Andreski has.in
to use their brains' is
-i.rd *h"n he addirces the minority 'who like embrace the whole of
irra."a , t rr,r". of importance, bui it doesn't
ihought, tt" whole humanly essential nature of thought' What it
i,rt"r'ort it irditp"nsable, an a sociologist really ought to have a full
and pondered of that truth-which in any-case needs to te
irrrisi",l orr, ,nd
^*r."r,"., ifthere is to be any hope ofsaving humanity
"fi"ctively,
frorn what threatens it-
I criticize Andreski gratefully; his work within the restrictions of
the field of thought prop"t to his dscipline is admirable, and he must
he resarded as an allv who repays critical respect' lt is those restlctlons
*hi.i .^k" it potrile for him io say: 'true insights are cumulative and
retain their value regardless of whai happens to their discoverers'' One
recalls Daniel DoyJe's reply to Arthur Clennam, who is urging
him
give with the Circumlocution Office: 'The
ro up his hopeless baitie
thiig is as true as ever it was.' It is the spirit of science, and.we can
hardiv think of science as treatened at all immediately by the mas
medi and the processes of cretinization. So, while science goes on'
e ideal of disinterested clear thinking may remain Potent in some
elds where, as in that which Andreski describes as his own,
the
rigours of exact science, being imposible, don't apply'. Yet we can't
hp asking in what way true insights can be cumulative unless in a
peneral reosnition witin a profeisional community that the truths
i., ou".tior, i"ue b..n definitivelv esublished and can be safely built
orr.'it retaining their value'depends on the continuing fact of
";t
26
THOUGHT, LANGUGE AND OSJECTIVITY
such recognition-or does itl 'Value', actually, is a very impoltant
word, and therefore, in the nature o the case, insidiously dificult for
thought.
It has a close association with the word'standard', itselfvery tic,
especially in relation to the asumptions going with a self-commitment
t; logic, clear thinking and disinterestedness. Andreski himsel
introduces the word in a brief paragraph coming a few lines before the
opening of that which I have quoted:
Whethei exhortation helps much may seriously be doubted, for despite
centuries o inveighilg against steali[g and cheag, these misdemea-
nours do not al4)ear to be less common now thal at the time of Jesus
Christ. On e other hand, it is dificult to envisage how any staudards
whatsoever can continue to exist without some people taking upon
themselves e task of afirming them and preaching against vice.
The attitude of that last sentence is wholly applaudable; it is the
attitude conveyed and made potent by the book. In feeling and judging
so one notes that 'eortation' in the rst sentence is, as Andreski uses
it, an ambiguous word. It might be commented that 'preaching' in
the last is too. But'preaching' is yoked wi 'affirming', and Andreski's
way ofaffirming is what may reasonably be called concrete presentation
accompanied by the relevant clear discourse-one j udges him to be
secure against ny charge of unfair selectivenes or improperly biased
commentary: what he does is to ex?lse the 'vice', having evoked the
standard by which it is vice. 'Exhortation' hardly of itself implies that
meod. Iiwe ask why he uses such a word, giving it the emphasis
of a supporting sentence, the answer seems to be that it expresses an
uneasyiense of there being something like an inconsistency haunting
his thought.
Theri are grounds for such a sense; they lend themselves best to
consideration in Andreski's chapter 8: 'Evasion in the Guise of
Objectivity'. They don't seriously impair the book _for A-ndreski's
avowed purpose, but, in a way that can be profitably taken as a
challeng, they entail issues in relation to 'values' and 'stanrds' about
which nvon concerned to enforce the contention that 'English'
should stand for a discipline of thought needs to be clear in his mind,
riculate and tactielly ready. Andreski's chapter opers:
The distinction between a judgment of fact and a judgment of ulue
has become one of the coner stones of philosophy ever since Hume
wrote his famous statemelt that 'rcason is, anil must always remain, tb.e
27
 THE LIVING ?RINCIPLE
slave ofe passions' . . . Though beset by the ficulties ofapplication,
due above all to the shading-o$ofcoucepts into one anoer, is stincl
tion underlies the ideal ofobjectiviry.
Actually tle ideal ofobjectivity cannot be what Andreski represents
it as being, and if e distinction as he posits it is one of the corner
stor"s of lirilosophy, then it is certainly imprudent- to commit oneself
to living in the Hume and Ruselt (a philosopher whom.he
"dific".
adcluceith avowed sympaty) are not sufrcient authorities regzrding
tle nature ofobjectiviiy, nd iLe student o'English' ought to be able
to wit well-founded conviction.
sav so
iouch here on the theme of 'English' as a liaison centre, a eme
I e mode, purpose and spirit of the influencing. He is thinking of
entailing the postulate that the main intellectual disciplines should be
..tor".J., in a universitv, but at a belief in the possible profit of
a-pro.rra" i, ,rot , beli.f in mixed courses, or in seminars on
"u.i,
Wittsenstein for literary The presence of philosophy in e
students.
unive"rsity should be important for 'English'; the profit would accrue
in the fil<Is of both disciplines. I had better add at once that I cnnot
ink of it as involving, ior'English', a dependence on auoritative
advice from the academic dePatment of philosophy' Before ofering
to iusti& this immodest avowal, I will quote anoer passage from
Arrdreski's t, and make t}te commentary it invites:
"hrpt
EveD to-day, the Pontaeous approach of anybody-who has made no
soecial efoit to himself to viewing his social envirolment, as
".iorto-
ii *"r.. from the outside, remains eootional and maoipulative, and e
overwhelming majority of pronouncements oo huan afairs are maile
either for theiake fgiving ,r"nt to or influencing other people's
"-otiom
behaviour. The latte; cao be achieved either by direct command, or by
iobuing people with aPProPliate sentiments, or by instilling into them
beliefs atut ihe existin ;ir;umstances and cau41 relatiors betweel
them
which will induce them to behave in order to satisfy their desires'
NormallS when we speak about human conduct, we condemn or praise'
p"rsoad" or Promise, reaten or cajole; and to be wing and able to
ir.orr ro"i"l behaviour dispassionately, and without an immediate
utitarian aim in view, rernains a hall-mark ofsophistication uncommon
evea to-da1 anil the 6rst glimmerings ofwhich appeareil in the writiags
of Macchiavelli.
The positive criterion, or standard, Andreski appeals to here- is
r"preserriecl by 'dispasionately', and the limiting weakness of his
tlrught it tire wry he sets about intimating what he means by
"pp"sdoesn't,
th" .-.-" as matter of fact, Positively define its force;
28
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
he merely adduces, to set over against it, various modes of treatment
tat we are to see as coming under'emotional manipulation'. 'Manipu-
lation', of course, is pejorative, and so is 'emotional' here, where it is
used very much in the spirit of Professor Plumb's adverb in is
sentnce from The Death of the Past'.'Anotler refugee in a never-
neyer land of the past is F. R. Leavis, whose picture of nineteenth-
century England is totally unrelistic as it must be emotionally salsfp
ing.' Eut'imbuing people wi appropriate sentiments', and 'instilling
inio em beliefs about existing circumstances and czusal relations
between tlem, in order to influence eir behaviour,' don't necessarily
answer to ndreski's pejortive intention: everything depends upon
influence where these are to be condemned. His description, in the
pasage I quote earlier, of his own expository and critical work as
iexhortation' makes it plain that he aims t exerting influence, and
at a sense of the need to exet it is a main element in the drive
behind his writing: 'it is difrcult', he says, 'to envisage how any
sandards whatsoever can contrive to exist without some People taking
upon themselves the task of afrrming em and preaching against vice.'
-
This avowal seems to me a highly valuable testimonn ough I
doubt whether Andreski himself realizes to the full its value and
e standards he speaks of ('any stanclards whatso-
importance. Are
ever') merely the standrds necessary to the achievement ofobjecti-v]t_y
as he conceives-or misconceives-itl That is not, s a natter of his
intention, plin. But the intention itself could have no better tlan a
very prtial clarity without a better understanding of e nature of
standrds than we can credit Andreski with. The issues are fundamenal,
and, in relation to the satus of 'English' as a discipline of thought, of
tle utmost importance.
ndreski, who rests on his assumptions as not seriously questionble,
invokes philosophic authority for them, and finds it in Bertrand
Russell, Now Russell's ofier to justiS the antithesis, sbtement of fact
and statement of value, is what Marjorie Grene, making a major
us of it in establishing her own very different position, criticizes in
chapter 6,'Facts and Values', of The Kruwer and the Rnowt. That
is a book which I incite literary students to use as a main recourse
for e acquiring of that knowledge o the development ofphilosophic
thought from Descartes to Polanyi which is essential to their thinking.
Of coune, not only in e prescription itself, but in that way of
intimating e kind of need it sewes, my immodest presumption is
29
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
exemplified. Itis actually inescapable: tere is no reason at all for
supposing that, if one consulted professional authority in the proper
academic department, there would be a high probability of the offered
prescription's being usable; in default of the rare miracle, the kind of
need would simply not be understood. This is not to imply that, two
real disciplines being co-present, mutual awareness would not be
generated, with consequent profit for both and for the university's
function s a creative centre of civilization.
Marjorie Grene's chapter, which so clearly bears in a fundamental
way on 'English', is suficiently self-contained, so that, discussion of
the isues it raises being in question, one could reasonably send one's
students directly to it-it could in fact be read as an opening into e
book. It seems to me at no philosopher could seriously disturb my
ad hoc judgment that the book is a very ne piece o work, wide-
ranging, pregnant and closely knit-unsurpassable, in fact, for my
purpose. To offer to summarize even e given chapter would be
absurd. I shall merely make su use of the book here as may facilitate
dre argument I am committed to. f discovered it, never having seen
or heard it recommended, when poking round the philosophy shelves
in the Petty Cury bookshop (now demolished). Impresed, on a
sampling glance or two, by e quality of the writing (and by the
brief introduction), I read more carefully here and there, and without
I
hesiation bought the book. It should, thinlq be recognized to be,
by the criteria implicit in my theme, which is the nature ofour urgent
need ofa genuine educated class, an essential stand-by and a classic'
Near e opening of the chapter Marjorie Grene writes:
Nor is it Kant a.lone who insists on such a seParatiol [between 'the
questions of knowing, doing and believing']. Kant was echoing, in this,
one-and one fundamental-consequence of the Calteian-Newtonian
world view. The duatiso of matter and mind entails a dualism of e
ertemal, 'objective', and the internd 'subjective'. There is e world
spreail out through space, independent ofmT feelings, ideas, or volitions;
and tlere are oy secret tioughts, e'modes'of my consciousness. The
purity of science, moreover, is thought to depend on ttre ertrusion of
e second from the 6rst. In Kant is dichotomy is repre.sented, for
eraaple, by the distinction between an oute! and an inner sene. In
contemporary philosophn wi its emphasis on language, it becomes e
<listinction between stements of fact and tatements of value. Again,
the purity ofscieace is helil to depend on keeping e fororer uncontaoi'
nateil by e latter.
3o
THOUGHT, LANGUGE AND OBJECTIVITY
Perhaps e best was that put
lnol,lrl formulation of this dichotomy
forwa;d by Ogden and Richards in
Te Meaaitg of Meatg, whete
they distinguished between 'cognitive' and 'emotive' meaniug and cor-
respondingln e statemelts ofscience, which purvey information, wele
distinguished from the 'pseudo-statenents'* of poetry or religious
discourse. Inforraation, it is alleged, is always izapersonal; where the
person, and with him, values, preferences, emotions, enter, inforoation
widraws. Allied to this kind of categorization is e conception of
'value-ftee scieoce' which has been held to be the norut not only for e
natunl scierces, but fo the social sciences as well. Hete too 14e are
often asled to set againste wholly objective statement of cience the
impassioreil utterances of e arts which ae not statement at all'
It may be deduced from the tone of this that Marjorie Greneh
book difiers funclamenally rom The Hisnry of Western Phiknphl
of Bertrand Russell, whose basic asumptions about the nature of
objectivity confirm the confidence so patent in Andreski at his own
need no defence. I menton The Hittory of Westen Philosaphy because
f have known experienced and energetic students, men of senior
status aftending my seminars, who, having prescribed for temselves a
better acquaintance wi that background of philosophic ought
which they have realized to be an esential element in 'literary history',
had, they confessed, embrked on a perusal of at least immediately
relevant stretches of Russell's large volume. The word 'confesed'
registes the fact that ey came out wi this avowal in response to
my telling a group that people in their position hadn't time to discover
foi themselves how litde the energy spent on Russell's history could
bring em of the insight, understanding and stimulus to tought they
needed. Of course, as I told my seminas, The Know$ arrd the Knawn,
a much smaller book, gets its coherence, and with this its pregnancy
and its effective range, by having for its directing and informing spirit
the profound conviction expressed in the Introduction-the conviction
that the Cartesian-Newtonian dualism must be exorcized from the
Western mind. This, I judge, means tht the book will give e
literary student e kind of help he needs; Russell's book certainly
won't. It is, I have insisted highly desirable at a department of
philosophy should be one of dtose co-present wi 'English', but
however beneficial criticism and advice from at department-and
the posibility, or probability, of criticism-may be, it seems to me in
. A tersr uude curtat n 'Eng by I. A. Rchatds's Scimce atd Poe*1-'Thafe
ooly pseudo-tteEert.'
3r
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
the highest degree unlikely that philosophic criticism-or-advice w-ill
bring e to s Marjorie'Grene as mischievously fallacious or, for
my purpose, anything but irreplaceable.
Sir" -rto iiplain that Ruisell's attempt to produce statements of
fact while avoiding words by which 'substances' rather than direct
and particular percepts would be suggested is absurd:
But can auy names, as the geuenl quatity words, red, feae'
su
coloured, etc., ofwLich he is trying to builcl his frorly factual language,
work uniquely for li perceptl Bo the words emselves and the iogs
ilesignate aie irrai* of a vcnak. The une woril, e'g', 'czt',
derilnates e same in& cat, in ttre ense at a Eark or souud of the
sao cbs desigoater a ng of the same dass. But no occasion of 'cat'
or cat is identical uri any other.It is in each (,;se a inilar occrurelJ.ce
it
or odect. How do I know that is similar, aod similar enough 19 !e
subsumeil under the same classl By memory, a Humean empiricist
would sa;,. But even granting that, Eeetitrg cat 2, I recall cat r, I must
nac tJ coapaisonl I litt, cat 2 6 cat r and fnd em similar
^o"
by a standard, a standard which ,'r e co[cePt cat . . . I do not mean
t suggest that there is an erplicit, or even an 'unconscious' ioference
involiil her", every time I recognize a cat as a cat. But as my worlil
is coloured, so too t is catiIharted and at the sae tie ttructut'd
rlro*gl largaag* I dwell in a coherent auil mutually inter-acting
fraoework f word-dasses anil thing-classes; ooly within sucL a frame
do individual sounds or writteu shapes and individual animals become
what they are. The power to generze which speech deoands is tbe
power t sort out according e$ective uorms bo utterauce! aDil
uatual events. (Page :68)
Marjorie Grene makes it plain in respect of the wgrd 'standard'
it as one does in literary criticism is natural and proper,
that to use
and consistent with the use she makes of it in dealing with Rusell'
She gives an account of e nature of 'standarcls', and of e way in
whii, in the act ofjudging, ey enter in, and we see demonstrated
in the chapter at tirer iia continuity from the kind of judgme-nt
in terms oi which she ansu/er Rusell io e literary judgments the
nature o which I offered to explain to a critic of a book o mine a
goocl many years ago.* 'Allow e', he had said 'to sket your ideal
f po"*y, yo"t "nlorm" wit which you measure every Po:t ' :, '''
My concern was to bring home to him that tlere was no real readrng
ofa poem that didn't involve a complex proces ofelaluative response
. *z Te Connn Padrir, 'Litetaty Criticiam aod Philoophy"
32
THOUGHT, LANGUGE AND OBJECTIVITY
at was truly personal, and I replied: 'The critic-dre reader of
poetry-is indeed concerned with evaluation, but to figure him as
measuring wi a norm that he brings up from the outside is to
misrepresent tle process.' (Tht, of course, was only a start.) Marjorie
Grene, having insisted that value-judgment enters into sttement of
fact from the beginning, writes:
To say 'this here reil' I uust alrea have abstracted from my irrmeiliate
relational perceptions, stood. bact from them aucl assesseil thero, so ae
to be able to place a new occufietrt into e class oflike-though-difering
particulars into which it fits. Only theu can I ug it as 'red'. Not that I
have in my meoory a series of particular colour ioages such as Hume
suggestedi what I have is the power of bringing each new particular to
t[e bar of judgment according to a principle, a standaril, by whi I
judge it. That standard is neither verbally formulable, tror Pleent as
ual ioage, or a sedes of visual ioages. (Page t 63)
One has e power because, in that way which defies 'clear and
logical' satement-defies deliberate thought unles in a creative
writer's use of language-one belongs to a community. The standard,
though personal-apprehended personally as in and of e nature of
the real, and applied personally, but not as a matter ofdecision-is not
mere! percora\ tis a product o immemorially collaborative creativity.
The kind of valuejudgment immediately in question in e paragraph
from The Knower and the Knowx which I have just quoted is at e
oadrematical logician's end ofthe spectrum, the end tactically selected
s representative by Russell for his Canesian purpose. The discipline
that maintains e stanrlards ofscience has its existence in a specializing
community, the intellectual devotion of which is a special and pro'
fessional monlity. But ndreski would do well to ponder this ([
quote agin from Marjorie Grene)-it seems to me an unquestionable
truth:
No discipline, however 'factual', however 'detached" can come iqto
being or remaiu in etelce excePt in so far as e fundamental evalua-
tive ace of the iodividuals belonging to a given culture have legislatecl
into eristence and maintain in estence the area of free inquiry aud of
Eutual confirnation or falsicatioq which such iuquiry deoancls.
(Page r8 t)
Marjorie Grene doesn't make in any way re point that, for my
purpose, Ineed now to make, but it is implicit in e sentence I
quoted in order to make it. It is there in the phrase, 'the fundamental
33
 TIIE LIVING PRINCIPLE
evaluative acts of e individuals belonging to a given culture'.
culture is a community in the sense in which I used the word a few
sentences back, and e force o the last quoted sentence is at e
community constituted by the acceptance and maintenance of the
discipline upon which science depends belongs, of its nature, to a more
inclusive community having produced, encloses it.
whi,
I use 'community', I
say, in a special sense in order to make my
point To make such a point one 4s to use key-words in special
senses which one must rely on e context to define. The inking
that involves that use of 'commuaity' is a kind excluded by the criteria
implicit in ndreski's 'logiC and 'clarity', an exclusion compelled by
e Cartesian dualism which ose criteria impose. It is all in keeping
that he should lightly and briefly dismiss Michael Polanyi. Marjorie
Grene, in that sentence, exemplifies e necessary responsible and
creative 'imprecision' in e use of words of which I speak when she
writes: 'haye legislated in'o existence'. She has already, in the same
paragraph, thrown out intimations tIat, taken up in 'legislated', which
applies aptly enough to the 'laws'of e discipline, make it accepable
as covering also the prior development which made both recognition
of the 'laws' and self-subordination to them posible:
Moer anil child, as Buytendijt' says, eady form a society. The
child's discovery, and colstruction, of the world eady takes place with
and through others, tlrough question and answer, though social Pla7,
tlrough the older child's or e adult\ intelpretation of pictures, the
teaching of language aud writing-al1 e way to the resear student's
trainiog in e school ofa master. All the way we are shaping ourselves
on e mod.el ofor in criticism ofothers, and ofthe strtdards eobodieil
io the ves of others, AII tnowledge, eve! the loost abstact, ests only
wiin the furdamental evaluation, 6rst of e total coomunity, which
permits and lespects such knowledge, and secood, vr'ithin this totality,
f the special community whose conseasus makes possible e existence
ofthis special discipne. (Page r8o.)
My argument makes it necessary to add an insistent
here.
iThe child's discovery, and construction, of the world'-exPlicitness
is possible
beczuse e reality he was born into was already the Human W'orld,
e world created and renewed in day-by-dzy human collaboration
rough e ages. The 'collectivity' to which, when he uses e word
'social, Andreski reduces society may ofcourse be said to hve a dep
in time in tat it has a history which a 'social+cientific' writer might
writei but, for such a writer's thought, tme is not a dimension in a
34
THOUGHT, LANGUGE AND OBJECTIVITY
community's actual present existence in e way in which it a
dimension, an essentiI constituent presence, in Marjorie Grene's
'community-I refer to the last-quoted passage, where the context
gives a complex force to e word, a force that cn be done justice
to only in a decidedly anti-Cartesian commentry.
Yet I ink at Andredki, offered those sentences to consider, might
very well pass'the total community'as inoffensive to his habit of
disciplined commonsense, his criteria of logic and clarity-pas it as
being, for thought, no more than the logically and clearly analpable
collectivity. In the part played by tlis concept in his thought we may
see e extent to which e Cartesian ghost can disable a notably
vigorous intelligence.
To the business of exorcism the distinctive discipline of thought
that should characterize 'English' may be said to be addressed. But
that is only a negative account; its force depends on a realization of
what positively e kind of thinking whi the discipline fosters is.
To the implicidy invited challenge there can, of course, be no an$ryer
tat is direct and brief. I will move towards providing one by recapitu-
lating te account I have given in various places of the nature of
Practical Criticism-or, rater, of what I refuse to call that, but
exemplify later in this book under 'Judgment and Analysis'.
Analysis is a process of re-cretion in response to e black marLs
on e pages. It is a more pondered following-through of the process
of re-creation in response to the Poet's words that any genuine and
discussible reading of the poem must be. Such a re-creation enails a
diversity of kinds ofjudgment, and when I emphasize the diversity I
am thinking of the different kinds of'value' that we cover wit e
one word. A judgment is personal and spontaneous or it is notling'
But to sy that it is 'spontaneous' is not to sy at it may not have
been prompted by a suggestion from anoer; and to say at it is
'personal' is not to say that it means to be merely that. The form of
a j udgment is 'This is so, isn't itl', the question asking for confirmtion
that the thing ir so, butprepared for an answerin tle form,'Yes, but-',
te 'but' standing for corrections, refinements, precisions, amplifica-
tions. The judgments may by Andreski's criteria be 'value-judgments'
but ey are in intention universal.
Though e lzlidity ofa total inclusive judgment ofa Poem cannot
be demonstrted, it is always possible in criticism to get beyond the
mere assertion. The critical procedure is tactical; e critic, wi his
finger moving from this to tat point in the text, aims at so ordering
35
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
his particularjudgments ('This is so, isn't itt') at, 'Yes' having in world, a worlil at present ights to Ee as coloured because, using my
eyes and. optic nerves and brain and eye muscles, I have acquired the
ttre succesion of em almost inevitably come for answer, te rightners
power to ;bsume my particular erper.iences, in a particular ghted and
of e inclusive main j udgment sands clear for e prompted recogni-
lupercial aspect, under colour concepts. These conceprc, ke all
tion-it makes itself, needing no assertion. The element of 'promPting" concepts, are standards, by which Ijudgerlr'rto be such-and-such-in this
of course, is present in ttre very nature of the critical undertaking, cas" rid. 'This-her"-red' is already a highly stluctured statement, reflect-
whi embodies a positive impulse, and has a creative puryose. This ing a compler achievement of abstraction and appraisal. (Page
is what 'exhortation'-the word about which Andreski is equivoc*lly 16+.)
apologetic-registers in that passage I quoted from his first apter
z7 above). O the child she says, virtually, that it is able to grow into full
-
(page
it in a fully human world, a world shaped
nalysis, then, in so far as it aims at establishing a favourable humanity because lives
judgment, is the proces of justifying the assumption at a poem by all kinds of human value-judgments and informed by distinctively
human 'values'. The 'total community' to q'hi she reers is, properly
which we take to be a real poem stands between us in what is in some
sense a public world, Minds can meet in it, and tere is so essential a considered, both e actual enumerable community which, as the
bearer of cultural tradition, is its effective presence, and the wider
measure ofconcurrence as to its nature and constitution that ere cn
fact, to which, by partici-
be intelligent-that is, profiable-difiering about what precisely it is. human community, transcending statistical
It is neither merely Private, nor public in the sense at it can be pating in a living culture, one belongs, having access to the pro6t of
brought into a laboratory quantified, tripped over or even Pointed to- many centuries of human experience.
ttre only vzy of pointing to particulars in it is to put one's nger on I am afraid that I fail to satisfy in all this the criterion of 'logical
given spots in the asemblage of black marks on e page-and that and clear', tltough to me my logic seems all right. But the complexities
ssemblage is not the poem' The poem is a product, and, in any and subtleties of the real and fundamental must sometimes be con-
experienced actual existence, a phenomenon, of human creativity' the sidered closely and 'in depth', and it turns out then that they tend to
essintially collaborative nature of which it exemplifies in diverse defy e rationality of either/or. Some, indeed, of e essential defiant
distinguiable modes. And yet it is real. To use a ormulation I Eus-for instance, that regarding tle mode of existence in which a
threw out years ago in e course of defining the nature of the poem is'there'-are not difficult to recognize. Yet there are intellec-
discipline I am concerned to vindicate, it belongs to e 'Third tually energetic persons on whom, in default of the development in
Realm'-the realm of that which is neier public in the ordinary them of any strong interest in poetry the logic that might have made
sense nor merely Private. awareness f the 'Third Realm' potent in eir thought witl hardly
I point in this explanation of what critical analysis actually is to have much cogency.
e peculiar importance for thought of the distinctive discipline of Such persons might be asked to consider the nature and mode of
literary study-the discipline that should give university 'English'.its existence of a language-of e language in which they write and
tide t exisience and respect' For an account of how a poem exists think (for not only do ey express their thought in iti witlout a
is a pregnant hint of e way in which the Human World is created lnguage they would be incapable of ought). Where r'r the Engli
and, in constant renewal, maintained. It is into the Human World languagel You can't point to it, and the perusal of a linguistician's
that, in Marjorie Grene's sket of a human being's attainment of full risJwi[ do nothing to help you towards an answer to such questions.
humanity, the child is born-e world in which it more and more It is mncretely 'there' only as I utter the words and phrases chosen
fullv livesi and she makes it plain that living is both re-creative and by e meaning (iz me, but outwrd bound) which they convey and
creative. Explaining, in her refuation of Russell, e nature of yu ake em. But that, of course, is only, as it were, a hint at the
standar she says: nat,,re of an intelligendy unsatisfactory answer, which is what, at
But I carry about with me neier a picture of the colour pryamid nor best, one could hope to achieve. I might, at the end ofa seminar, say:
an operating spectroscoPe. The fact is rae at I ve io a coloured 'It was there, in the criss-cross of utterance between us" But thet,
j6 37
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
too, would be only another hint' Still, we all have an intimate acquain-
tance with e nature of linguistic communication, and such hints
ould be enough to elicit from an intelligent but non-lite?ry-Peol
e recognition-that thought about human afzirs is grievously disabled
if e tlrinker feels bound by a logic th at takes'either Public ar private'
to be an q<haustive antiihesis-one offering alternatives at are
suffcient for the distinctions one needs to make.
mind as good as Ardreski's.might beled by ese consiq".1ti",":
not merely toLke e force of e point about the-w-ay in which the
poem is 'there', but, more generally, to see at full recognition of
:t1," Thitd Realm'and its nature is necesary to the kind of thought
to which his book commits him. In no other way can he escape te
contradictions and inconsistencies his suspicion of which he betrays
here and there. But ull recognition means training and habituation,
and Andreski's training has nabled him to dismiss in this ofr*hand
wav t}le contemDorarv who had most to teach him: 'Manchester
Uversity made an inLresting experiment when (at his own request)
it converied Miael Polanyi's post in chemistry into a chair of social
sturlies, expecting perhaps tLat he would replicate his 'ti"co-.r'eries in a
r,"* "ld . . . w, as you might guess, did not happen" (Page r9,9)'
I harln't thought of"th". oith"-t*o .ttays of Polanyi's to whi [
send my pupils rst as falling under 'social itudies', but certainly real
attenti;n'Paid to 'Sense-Giving and Sense-Reading' along w.i$ 'Jhe
Logic of Tacit fnference' $ot}. in Knowing and Being) .mig}.t have
bro"ught home to Andreski at 'social' in e use of e word he
constently endorses is esentially and insidiously reductive, devializing
supremely impotLnt concept of 'society" It might-at
'the
as it rloes
anv rate have inuced iome-uneasiness in him when, in writing (for
example) the following, he had to recognize how habitually he had
pro"nt" e reader ii m"ch e same kind of choice-a choice
fier"d as orre between real thought on t}le one hand and undisciplined
self-indulgence or emotionality or e other: 'Nonetheless, the great
Cartesian-tradition of clear ind logical thinking has withered and
made room for a predilection or m1tification'. (Page zo8') But at
would have involiecl his having registered that Polanyi had attacked
e Cartesian dualism (on wich the ideal of'togic and clarity-
depends) wi all the formidableness of a subde mind that was botl
profounrlly original and rigorously trained-attacked it out ofa training
v"ry difi""r,t tom at of whi I make myself an advocte in is
Uoh ana wi an appro very difierent from mine' A basic as
38
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
sumption of Andreski's is that the Cartesian dualism is unassailable,
having been established for good.
Polanyi as an epistemologist insists at what for philosophers is
'mind' is'tere' only in individual minds, and that an individual mind
is always a person's and a person has a body and a history. 9i: ryld
is the mind of his body, and his body is the body o his mind. The
dualism that has defeated so many epistemologies is eliminated here'
For Polanyi enforces this insistence in an account of knowing,
inking and discovering in which he emphasizes the lacr element in
these and makes it plain that they could not have been at all if mind
had not been the mind of a body, since on e un-Cartesian actuality
this last formulation points to depends e essential part in them
played by the tarlt-depends the process 'by which we acqufo" Eo*
iedge thit we cannot tell'* which is essential even to a trained sociolo-
gist's thinking. I pay due reect to Andreski when I say that I cnnot
believe at, if-relaxing his Cartesian certitude-he had really read
the two essays to which I have referred, he would have been able to
dispute with confidence this conclusion:
,!ll boaledge fallt ittto ore of tiese tan clauet: it ir ;rler tacit ar lozled
ia tacit ittowledge.
The ideal ofa stricdy explicit knowledge is indeed self-coatradictorg
deprived of their tacit co-eficientL all spokel words, all formulae, all
maps and graphs, are strictly meaniugless. An exact mathematical theory
means nothing unless we recognize au inexact non-oaematical
knowled on which it bears and a person whose juclgment upholds is
beadng.f
Here, for the discipline of thought I am contending for-e
efiective recognition of it as intellectually and culturally necessary-
we have something like an extra-literary charter. It is e exra-
literary nature of his approach, that of a distinguished scientist whose
impelling interest was e nature of scientific discovery, that makes
Polanyi so laluable an ally. His realization that mind is always an
individual mind, a unique person's and the mind of a body, has an
obvious bearing on the problem or crux for thought (it is difficult to
decide how it should be referred to) ttrat Andreski raises, but-most
significantly-may be said to be hardly aware that he raises, in a
p"ssage I shall quote. It is, for explicit ought, e fundamental
* Kaawing and Being, page 42.
I Kn @it g at d Being, page ryS.
39
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
chllenge tht cnnot escape being recognized as such -by ose who
make tie very difierent approach to it from Polanyih $at .is my
concern h"re-the approach by way of wha't should be the literary
student's approach to language. This is Andreski's passage:
In the old debatc about whether the individual is more ioportant than
the group, ot the oer way round, e issues have been obscured by.e
use of e expression 'e individual'; because, strictly speatiug'
"onsltant
there is no such ing as'the individual' but only many individuals'- An
eouallv careless hvpostatiration underes e frequendy repeated clich
being aLIe to control his future, often phrased as a rhetorical
"or,'-"n
que-stion' Ior as soon as we ast, 'Who is manl', we see that he does not
ekt, aril there are only meo and women with wried and largely
iocompatible sentiments, dispositions and aims' No iloubt they could
controi oany things ifthey wuH only agree, but they do not' Thereforg
to soeak of'man ecidine or controlling is nonsense' Once we get rid
of this nguistic .irag *" car see at the liberal phi191ophi91
initividualiis -"r" tro" collectivists in the sense of defending the
iutelests o maly individuals, as opposeil to the Prelogative of the
powerful few . . . (Page t84')
This illustrates very usefully e nger inseparable from Andreski's
necessarv common sense. The strong common sense ls necessary
to hls
iun.tior exposing the follies, ftuities and pretensions, of,'social
"f
science' and 'social sludies'. To say this is to grant implicidy
that the
ir.irlin"d robusmes of mind and purpose, with the command of
k ,o*l.dg" at accompanies it, has, in the study of civilized. society'
ur b"ing what it is, a respectable positive.unction'. But
"irilLtio"
e ouoted passage dmonstrates tltat when the stanrds that make it
,"*J"abl" pr"uu]t the danger remains and is in fact accentuated' For
,h"'"o-*orr-."r,r" .pirit, reinforced by the insidious halassurance at
it has acquired the auority of science in becoming disciptined'.tenrls
i. t" . "ra deal worse ar, not eno"gh, and- our cultural habit'
*hi kn'o*t of no better guide, desperately needs, not confirmation'
brith" -*t.hu.p, disturbiig and insistent of challenges'ltis revealing
ho* co"fid."tlv' ndreski ieduces e issues to the futility of e
;.iJ a"t",e, foi his way of exposing e old futility is to present us in
his own terms with what is esentially the same thing'
What ts tutlle
is his ofier of logical cogency, but what at ofrer actually .represents
i. *ao""-"i, of a iscouragit g actuality-the reign of reductive
"i
common sense: 'Once we get rid of this linguistic mirage, \'e
crn se
the lib"ral philosopt ical individualists were tue collectiviss
in the
+o
THOUGHT, LANGUGE AND OBJECTIVITY
sense of deending the interestsof many individuals, as opposed to the
prerogative
- ofthrpowerful fewi whereas ' . . collectivist ideologies ' ' ''
Ition't, I think, be concluded that I opt for 'collectivist ideologies''
The assumption ierent in 'linguistic mirage'-is is the gravamen
ofmy char against ndreski-amouns to a reusal, or an inability,
to reiog.,ir anlsential truth about the nature of hmanitas andlife'
It meais at a solution of the problem he Poses (or doesn't, he feels,
himself need to pose) must necessarily be in some sense 'collectivist"
The 'liberal philosophical individualists' of whom he approvesas'true
collectivists' re as iuch committed to an account of society in basic
and reductive terms of 'collectivity'-and where you have collectivist
liberal philosophies ofsociety you are likely to have also e 'collectivist
ideologies'tht h" obuior,sy (rs I do) htes. But my main point is
that hi has condemned himself to e inconsistencies his sense of
which makes him uneasy. He can't explain why it is that we may
still (he contends) entertain hoPe. He speaks of the need for eical
promptings and impulsions, but seems to think of them as producs
f " .1""r and logical thought the posibility o which ey re to
impel us to preserve-or restore. Though he refers to'rst-rate
creative work' achieved in the study of nature and does not 'deny
at it is posible to acquire a good knowledge of the other side of the
cultural fnce Bertrand Russell did)', he can't conceive or imagine,
(as
his thought at any rate has no recognition for, the kind of human
creativity that created the English language.
When one considers one's relation to the language one was born
into, and e way in whi that language exists, one 6nds oneself
contemplating the unstatable basic ftuth that Andreski dismises as
'the linguistic mirage', Because e
relation, or te way, can't be
stated, an{ eluding discursive treatment, doesn't permit o logiczl or
clear exposition, it is not for Andreski real, or anything but mystifi-
cation. Yet what is at isue is e pre-condition of language, ought
and objectivity-so essentially tIe pre-condition that disciplined minds
like Andreski's have no need to recognize it when ey think
'objectively', or before or after. Yet it is an inescapable condition of
[6 (and ihought is a living activifli and, though thinkers-even
inkers about iocial reality-can dismis it as a linguistic mirage, the
further their field of thought is from maematics, the more damaging
is e non-recognition to e quality of their ought.
The dangerousnes of Andreski's Cartesian allegiance is seen in e
way in whi he ofrers to pass off on e reader a plausible but false and
 THT LIVING PRINCIPLE
obfuscating 'either/or'. I am far from being tolerant of the, clich
about mari'being able to control his future', but I deplore Andreski's
common-sense recourse to the word 'hlpostization'. 'For as soon as
we ask, "Who is manl", we see at he does not exist, and ere are
only men and women with varied and largely incompatible sentiments,
dispositions and aims'. Such utterances-need I say it?-can in some
contexts be 'salutary common sense" But common sense is not enough;
and Andreski here demonstrates this by insisting on its final authority
in regard to issues that transcend its powers even to simu'late plausible
enga;ement. The tactic-i what is so obviously uncalculating can be
cul"l" th"t-by which he seels to legitimize his common-sense stance
bv backing the'tiberal philosophical individualists' 'true collectivists'
as
is rraive: or as soon as we ask, "Who is man?", we see that he does
not exist'. When, to quote the title of te introductory chapter of-my
last book, I wrote'Life is a necessary word', I also wrote that
'there' only in individual beings, meaning that the-only way. invhi
,n" or, pi.rt to life as concretely 'ere' is to point-to an individual
being an say, 'There you have n actual manifcstation of life'' This
last i-ropositiLn has meaning, to convey which meaning is a function
that anscends mere convenience, and is not to be disposed ofby asking,
'Who-or which-is life?'.
The fundamental truth or recognition I have gestured towards,
fundamental truth or recognition to which a close interrogation of
experience brings us, eludes discursive treatment-a fact that doesn't
prve it to be unimportant. It I
is when, said, one considers one's
ielation to the language one was born into, and e way in which that
language-in whic one has vital relations with oer human beings-
-thut
the funmental recognition can least be escaped,, but
"*iil,
alnges thought insistently. Where language is concerned, 'life' is
human lie-is man.
The dangerousness of Andreski lies in his assuming tat his
scursive use of language lb the use of language for
thousht-is,"o]r-on-."rr"
in e distinctive spirit that limits it, essentially, and more
o. l co-tlrminously, thati and inducing or conrming in most of
his readers e blankness he reveals. But e recognition closed to
him matters today as never beore. In the past e inevitable routine
tacit acquaintanc we all have sufficed; but today his assum-ption about
e real-for his con6dent assumption about e nature of thought is
that-seems to him so unchallengeable because it is e asumption
on which our civilization is buit{ or by which it is driven' It might
+,
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
be called the principleat civilization relies on to keep the machinery
working. Itis a principle tat means death: is is e age when a
computer can write a poem.
A creative centre of e educated public we need will, then,
cultivate a more adequate notion of thought-and that means cultiva-
ting the practice. There must be practised thinking that brings in
consciously, with pertinacious and delicate resource, the un-Cartesian
reality underlying language and implicit in it; what is inexpressible in
terms of logic and clarity, the unstatable, must not be excluded from
ought as Andreski excludes it when he plumps so naively and demon-
stratively for individualistic collectivism. And this brings us to the
importance, in relation to my theme, of creative literature. All major
literary creation is concerned with thought-thought tlat men of
Andreski's bent should take seriously. That is a constatation the force
life is ofwhich I have tried to make plain in a discussion ofone ofthe world's
great novels, Little Donit.* In tat work, as e challenged critique
must aim at bringing out, Dickens, making a characteristically pro-
found, and necessarily creative, inquest into society in his time, tackles
in sustained and unmistakably deliberate thought e basic unstatable
at eludes the logic of Cartesian clarity-and ofphilosophic discourse
too. Taking it as granted that lie is tIe artist's concern, he develops
in full pondering consciousness te un-Cartesian recognition that,
while it is'there' only in individual lives, it r'r there, and ils beiag there
makes them lives: what the word 'life' represents, and evokes, is not
to be disposed of under e rubric of 'hypostatization', or collectivity,
or linguistic convenience.
Emphasizing e affinity between Dickens and Blake, I point out
how the seme implicit in the cast osharply different main personae
whointeractin Little Dorrit appli* an equivalent of Blake's distinction
between the 'selfhood' and the 'identity'. Making and enforcing is
point is inseparable from observing how Dickens's art insists on
creativity as the characteristic of life. The selfhood asserts its rights,
and possesses, from wiin its egocentric self-enclosure; the identity
is the individual being as the focus of life-life as heuristic energy,
creativity, and from the human person's point of view, disinterested-
ness. It is impossible to doubt that Dickens, like Blake, saw the
cretivity of tle artist as continuous with the general human creativity
at, having created te human world we live in, keeps it renewed and
. Dicle$
tlre Noelirr, F, R. atrd Q. D. Iaavis, Chapter Y.
.f.,
 THE LIYING PRINCIPLE THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
asked him what was the drive behind his cteative work (which went
r1. This dav-to-day work of collaborative creation includes
the
human on until his death): 'One writes out ofone's moral sense-for the race,
.."r,inn oftrnurg", iout which there couldn't have been a
as it were.' I can imagine an enlightened intellectual pouncing
;;;ld- i;1";";"";, as I have said, the truth I will refer to as 'life and
triumphantly, for anti-Laurentian comment, on that'moral', but
U".i-. ti,iatable which, lost to view and left out' disables
any
iiu"i,f," Lawrence's use of the word has a signicance very remote from that
life, most open to recognrtlon
attempt to think radically about human is
i,. In ajor literary works we have the fullest useof which such a critic, in his routine way, assumes' To make plain what
rr'"i"ti it"i". the actual signicance is I should, discussing the issue with students'
lansuase, and intelligent study of literature brings us inevitabll-to,the
turn to a short story of Conrad's, The Setet Sharer*. lt is brief, but
r"."ri,i." from whlch, in his thinking, Andreski cuts himself off' I obviously the work of a great writer, one notably unlike Lawrence,
i"rJi.--iJ, and that is' the nature' of
"r -uoe, the import"nic, with 'English" the and it might have been written in order to help me to enforce my
i'f," ir"ipfi"" .f,ftought that should be associated
point. I have discused the tale, and-inevitably, seeing its nature-
r"i""tti* .*ar. Onn say wi pregnant brevity that the achieve-
iro- *y pr","t t point of view, in a critique that is very accessible,t
*"na ofin" ,m in vigotors established practice would be a
-potent and f needn't here attempt to summarize either the tale or the dis-
;;*g"*; from the Cnesian dualism' 'Potent' here means fruitful
A new realization of the nature and the cussion. It will, I think, suficientlF serve my purpose, and with best
in oo?i,iu" consequences.
economy, if I quote a pa:sage from my critique.
of.ieativity in life and ought would be fostered; there
"".ilriu"n*t needs' This brief exchange takes place between the young ship's master
-- nothins that the worl in our time more desperately
is
in his rst command and the head that, Iooking over the side as he
ih" ,i",rr" of livingnes in human life is maniest in language-
about language is' inseparably' keeps e first night-watch, he sees at the bottom of the ropeJadder
-rnif".i .o those whse thought
literary creationl They can't but realize mgre $a1 that shouldn't hve been }eft hanging there:
;;;h; rb.*
notially that a language is more than a means of exPressloni lt ls 'I suppose your captain's turned inl'
" rr"rtii i. ."tqrest"wi. out of representative expcrience',the upshot 'I'm sure he isn't,' I said'
or orecipitate of immemorial human living, and embodles varues'
ir,i;;,;;, id.ntificrtionr' conclusions, promptings, cartograp.hicalis if,oot'fr"r", my man. Could you call him out quietlyl'
f,-i"" l" i"""a potentialiiies. It exemp.lifies te.tru that.life I thought e time had come to declare myself.
continuity'
srowth and ero*ih .h^rg", and the condition of these is '1 am the capain.'
?i-J". ,r,Jitairid,ral eing, the particularizing actuality. of life'
and do"s thrs
back to the dawn of human consciousnes, and beyond' The inquirer explains that he has killed a man, and that he has escaped
i"i*i"ti.g " ,arzzg in him ofwhat is not yet-.the as yet unrealized' from con6nement on his ship, moored there behind the island, by
the achievd discovery o which demands ceatlve ettort'
slaKe was swimming.
I call em Mine' 'My father's a parson ia Norfolk. Do you see me before a judge and
.o"""* ,fr. 'identity' when he said*: 'Tho' jury on tlat chargel'
"ti "f
-kr-r,r, ,h", they are not'Mine" He was referring.to his paintings
The young captain doesn't. He knows by immediate intuition at
,J ",innr. but'he would have said e same o his poems' One's
prompts this isn't a case ofship's oficet zerrzr social ofender, but otil'o completely
calling an artist major is whether his work us
self-reliant and ully human individuals, each the focus of the highest
"rilti""'f"
."'.""ii. .irh*i*jlv and with the profoundest conviction'fr him- kind of moral responsibility. The ironn not a reductive but an intensi-
,o oa " words in ris mouth and impute to him that rare modesty fiing kind, that enforces this-the fact aod the recognition-is that (it
whi.h m"ket the claim that is genuinely a disclaimer' comes out incidentally) t\ey are both Qotway boys.
The bearing of this point on my theme comes out ln the..answer Some knowing psychological and esoteric subdety has been written
novelrst who
made by Lawience near his end to the visiting young
* To be found ia the colTection, 'Twirt Laad and Sea,
, To Ttuirr, 16 ug. 1799. r,.cl]Jded in ,4/rna Karenina atd Oter Essays .

4+ +5
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
about the double. The signifcance, however, is not psychological but
moral. I don't mean by that to endolse the modish esoteric suggestiveness
you frnd served up about guilt, or guilt-feengs, iu the young caPtain
(and, of course, in us), The young captain lat no guilt-feengs: that's
essential to the signicance, But he toul lrve had guilt-feengs if he
had not recognized his supreme moral-and humal-responsibility and
acted on it. He sees in the double who has killed a man at a/ter ego.
'It lqight very well have been royself who had done it'-that is his
attitude. He doesn't mean huobly that ie rjght have been guilry:
there's no question of guilt by the criterion that's iflvoked in Conrad's
art, B), which I don't mean that the spirit ofit is e,reitt ea?, Gut ,d
Biile, O the cont:o;r..f, tlere is an insistence on the inescapable oeed for
individual moral judgmert, and for moral conviction at is strong and
courageous enough to forget codes and to defy law and codied morality
and justice.
There is, in short, the very opposite o[ at 'simplification o man's
problems in e l.orld', that craving for a moral security to be found in
frm sheltering convention and routine discipline, of which [Conrad]
has been accused. . . . Faced with the quietly erplanatory swimmer, the
captat\ bar that it is his own supreme responsibility (he doesn't argue
is-he knows it immediately) to trust his judgment about aflother Ean
in such circumstances as these when its leport is so unequivocal.'It
might very we have been myself who had done that; in a sense, it
virtually is myself who has.' That is, he tnows how litde the 'great
security of the sea', ooral security baseil on a simple view of human
reaties, exists for the completely self-reliant, courageous and responsible
individual-which is wbat a Cotwal boy ought to be.
With what surenes Conrad has tackled here in his creative writer's
thought, the problem-'lives and lie'-tht was for Dickens, in Little
Dorit, at the centre of his profoundly deliberated undertaking, that
being an inquest into contemporry society. The young cPtain and
the fugitive from justice are, as they have to be, two separate centres
o sentience, two identities, but the way in which, while 'never
ceasing to be conscious of e separateness', we are made to think of
te fugitive as the cptain's double-'It might very well have been
myself who had done tat; in a sense, it is myself who has'-makes
te young Conrad-Captain for us, in the testing sitution, the presence
of life ('the rce') as human responsibility focused in the individual
being, one who so patently knows that he 'does not belong to himself',
My critical judgment is mine, in the sense that I can't take over
anyone else's (if I did, it would cease to be a judgment). But it is not
46
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
merely and possessively 'mine'; my implicit asumption being that it
is right, 'I know that it is not mine'-and that my resPonsibility is to
mean it as universally valid. Of course, it has a training behind it;
one that has entailed a complexity of necessarily collaborative fre-
quentation-a matter, most importantly, of exercising sensibility and
responsive thought on the work of creative writers' Such a judgment
seems to oneselfa judgment of reality, and for arriving at it there are
no rules, though there is active informing 'principle'.
The young Captain's instant judgment, or realization, that it is
his responsibility to save the young Chief Mate-a Conway boy who
has committed homicide-from j ustice also has a training behind it'
We may take the Conwal as representing or evoking it, the training-
ship being for us the symbol that emphasizes the signi6cance of the
immediacy with which they recognize that they belong to the same
spiritual world (a spiritual community) and speak the same language'
But for them too there are no rules; the reference to the Canwa!
mustn't suggest that their training reduces to discipline and a code.*
The common Conway background completes the evocative definition
of 'responsibility': it emphasizes the significance of the way in which,
cowing the almost mutinous crew, he deliberately puts the ship he
commands in desperate hazard, and outtages the master mariner's
morality, in order to give the Conwq boy who has killed a man the
best posible chance of swimming saely to land and surviving. I think
of Blake: 'I tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten
commandments,'f But Conrad leaves it not for a moment in doubt
that the Conway code isn't merely something to be broken. That it
irz'l is necessary to the paradox-the 'even' that Presents the breaking
For tle convenietrce ofthe reader I will quote again here extracts from what I
have quoted earlier:
Not that I have in my memory a of particular colour images such
series
as Hume suggested: what I ne*judgment
have is the pow'e! of bringing each
to the bar ojudgment according to a PriDciPIe, a staadard, by Fhich I
judge it. That standrd is neithe! verbally formulable, nor Present as a
visual image, or a series of visual images' ' ' The fact is rathe! that I
liv in a coloured orld . . . I hve acquied the pover. . '.
The Knrwer afld ]P Kn6n, Page t6+.
the way we are shaping ourselves on the model of or in criticism of others,
All
and of the standards embodied in the lives of others.
ibid. page t9o.
f From 'A Memorable Farcy' (at the end of Tra Marriage of Hea'aen and Hell):
Tle Carnllete lltitittgs of Willian B/a, (Oxford), Page r58.
+7
 THE LIYING PRINCIPLE
as having an essential part in e evocation of what
'responsibility',
in its uncodifiable nature, is. The Conway sands for te community,
transcending statistics and 'social studies', at gives responsibility its
collaboratively creative background and its quality as essential to the
human world. What the young cptin pre-eminendy, but with him
e reugee, demonstrates is the necesity and the nature ofthe living
principle' that keeps the enumerable community of any present-the
community at is exposed to 'social studies'-alive enough to endure.
This community is figured by the Merchant Service, whi
cnnot-s the young ief mate had testified in that recourse to
physical measures of enforcement which turned into homicide-do
without discipline and a code, It was by no chance freak at both
captain and chief mate were graduates of the Conway and the paradox
entailed in their vindication of 'human responsibility' belonged to the
spiritual culture, the human world, that had formed them-a culture
necessary to the Conwry ethos specialized within it. The two young
ship's offcers, as the tale makes plain, represent a very small minority,
but ey are far from being sports: without a nuclear live presence of
essential responsibility discipline and mde would be no better an
mechanical habit, and the mechanical can deal only wi the routine
and the expected. Men in any case are not machines, and someing
in them responds to the challenge that what manifesdy is a demonstra-
tion of esential human responsibility can't but be for them, and to
the reminder of what is required of em by the life ey focus.* That
both the captain and the chief mate each incurs the hostility of the
rest of his ship's complement is far from disposing of the point.
Lawrence's 'moral sense', then, is something like e antiesis of
what the anti-purian enlightened tirink ofas 'moral'. It is-what they
hate immeasurably more because they fear it-human responsibility;
in Lawrence, e human responsibility of genius. They fear it because,
whenever ey are aware of it, it makes tlem feel tleir nothingness,
and it too they call, assuring themselves oftheir superiority, purianism.
So Lawrence is a puritan, Andreski, avowedly without conviction,
refers despairingly to a needed 'ethical sense' that might perhaps assert
itself among e young, and is, clearly, he thinla of as an authori-
ttive sense of responsibility. With noing but e assumptions
+ I6ud casually, in today's ?iza.r: 'Whetr did E Coruervative milJster last
roaLe a speech about patriofi: that is to say, about the objective idealiso for
vhich most humaD beiogs have some yarning as distiact from tbe ratioaal self-
ilte!st which is the laguage of ost political appe todyt'
+8
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
implicit in his 'logic and clarity' to draw on, he can't suggest where,
unless out of the common sense that for him is ultimate, it is to come
from, or why it should have an efi.cacy that, in our civilization, it
hasn't shorln : inyoking common sense for its authority, it is to reinforce
common sense.
Human responsibility, as known to Lawrence and Conrad-we
lnou t\ey knew beczuse they re great creative writers-is e manifest
potency of life, Lawrence wrote in an early letter: 'I can't forgive
Conrad for being so sad and for giving in,' And it is true at, in
knowing tat he didn't belong to himself, Lawrence had, going with
his strong sense o belonging, t postive ahnung of e nature of what
he belonged to. One wouldn't confidently impute a comparable sense
to Conradi but one is sure tht Conrad too would have said o such
works as'The Secret Sharer', The thadow Zrzr and the great novels:
'Though I call them mine, I know that they are not mine.'
The thinking ofall great writers, the representatively human quality
ofgenius being inseparable from its intense individuality, is distinctive,
involving in each case a marked distinctivenes in the report on reality
at is conveyed. But, however sharp the differences, the consideration
to be stresed by anyone intent on vindicating 'English' as a discipline
of thought is at every great writer in te language belongs to e
one collaboratively creatiye continuity. The discipline is not a matter
o learning a deduced standard logic or an eclectic true philosophn
but rather oacquiring a delicate readines ofapprehension and a quasi-
instinctive flexibility of response, ese informed by the intuited
'living prnciple'-the principle implicit in te interplay between e
living language and te creativity of indidual genius. My 'interplay',
which is manifested iz the language as e writer uses it, is an intima-
tion at I have in mind my point that a language is more than a
'rneans of expression': it embodies values, constatations, distinctions,
promptinp, recognitions of potentiality. This doesn't mean that it is
univocal, implicitly dictating an ideal comprehensive conclusion. A
product of collaborative creativity, it makes continued and adlzncing
collaborative ought posible-and it will hardly be forgotten that
su collaboration entails, vitally and esentially, disagreements.
Finality is unattainable.
These considerations have obvious bearin on e study, in the
spirit represented by te discipline of tlought for which I contend,
of literature, e supreme creative art of lnguage. It is perhaps time
to say once more that I haven't the sanguine expectation of one who
+9
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
sees himself as ofering a sure prescriPtion' or a presctiPtion at all'
The disease that reitens to destroy humanity is uly frightening.
One of the most frightening things is ttrat no pointer to the only
way in which we could begin the combat against it, no considered
account in terms ofopportunist tactics and e principles ttrey rePresent,
will be widely recogniz"d ,s at. Perhaps it is ceasing t9 !9 a.tteega'
crudely and onfidentl6 that F. R. Leavis (for instance) inks at
the wrld can be saved by literary criticism, but this close ofa kindly
brief notice of my lasi book is typical of the reception to be
expected:
Apart from his beef that a gooal university (wbich of coln-e. wollct
have a good Engsh School) would be a creative centre of ciYization,
how"v"i, he hai ttl" to ofer in the way of dams to hold back e
Aruerican tid.e.
No proposed remedy answering to the analogy ofa dam could be
relevant t e actual disease. America has long been menacing our
future, and the complete triumph o Americanization there accelerates
the prgres of the disease in where it originated .and
is country,
ii
*ouid uny case have made a rapid and-menacing-advance. British
capital and ritish 'know-how' enabled America to develop a railroad
network at great speed and industrialism, a British invention, made
inevitable th-e victory of the Nor in e Civit War' There is still,
nevertheles, a difierence: we have sufiered no such abrupt opening of
an impassable gap between the Present and e past as was entailed
in the swift fotion of the new immense, and supremely powerful,
country. It is not credible that America could save itself; e ahnang,
the mmory, the faith, and the 'living intuitive faculty'that must.be
appealed to in e initiation of e new kind of susained creative
efiort can't be appealed to ere.
It isn't easy to complete te discrimination. I find it possible to say
only tat thre are siill the makings of an educated public to be
rallied into one here, and some ghost, or more, of memory drat might
be turned into active sympathy with the kind of creative effort in
whi alone there couid e hope. As for e 'good university', it
would be misleading if I suggested that I base my belief that such-an
effort should be mae on i expectation of Ending ,;a, or anything
closelv aooroachine e'eood'English School, which is an ideal' The
,rruttiit;tio" of iu"t-itio and-numbers in the Robbins era would
alone sufice to make belief so conditioned dismissible. Belief must be
5o
THOUGHT, LANGUGE AND OBJECTIVITY
both more humble and more bold. What I advocate is opportunism-
e taking, and making, of opportunities; opportunism inspired and
informed y 'the living principle'. From experience, I know that tere
are places where opportunities may be counted on, and I am sue at
ey could be made at many. To say this is to recognize that they udll
lury immensely in kind. Wherever there is a university 'teacher' with
the vocation and e courage that should go with it e posibility
exists; his initiatives are likely to enlist collaboration-and 'collabora-
tion' covers a diversity of response and assistance' This is faith, but
faith conrmed in experience. It may seem too easily said. I will add,
then, that I know that it may, tnd not without reason; and shift to
(what is in any case called for) anoer mode of intimating the nature
f my ess""tilly unsanguine but firm conviction: the human need
that ur civilization thwarts will be, by some t any university, so
strongly felt that initiatives offering practical recognition of what. it
is .nd sla for would meet, even in e face of grave difrculties, the
co-operative response' lfhis, of course, would be from minorities. But
it is in minorities that the living principle takes the creative initiative,
and I am assuming in this book that not only are very small minorities
worth enlisting andarming wi informed and fully conscious purpose,
but tat ifone doesn't believe that smll minorities can initiate decisively
there is no hope for mankind'
I don't, then, offer a syllabus, an outlined course of studies, or a
plan of campaign. My concern is to make plain the principles that
must inform inevitable opportunism. And when f say that tese
principles have their unity in 'the living principle' I make plain at
ih"v or,'t be, in the ordinary sense of the word, defined' I can only
aini at conveying, tacticalll and evocatively, what their nature is.
The 'denitin', idealty achieved, would illustrate the 'logical' ethos
of the discipline of thought in question. The intellectual imPortance
of te literary-critical study of creative works is intimated there-and
not merely f individual worlcs, but of e literature, the creative
continuity, tht relates them.
I refeired to literature a shott way back as e supreme creative
art of language. Perhaps I ought now to take notice of two points
about Englisli that have some bearing on my argumenl The first is
that English is spoken in North America by many more people than
ir, this Joontry, ,rrd that e American eths has- great prestige. and,
apparently, iriesistible influence. The idea that American English has
(in 'zest',''energy', 'inventiveness' and so on) an obvious vital superiority
5r
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
over British English, and that is superiority calls for mature con-
sideration in its earing on e cultural future, neerln't be discused as
criteria of
prooundly relev"ant to the preoccupation of is book: the
;srperiority' at are implied lack interest. And is brings us to the
othir poini: e creative conditions that produced e English langua
tlat mde Shakespeare posible have vanished on at final riumph
of industrialism-even more completely in America than here'
Something of thoee conditiors were behind Dickers's work. They
have gone utterly-gone for good; and with them e day'to-day
creativity of the bnglish+peaking peoples (a creativity that Eliot, in
tlris, at ieast, distinctively an American, seemed unaware of). It-is
plain that e quasi-living language represented by e alk of e
vast majority of e population couldn't have given e assyled 9k1o$
and the coniinuous prompting at Dickens still enjoyed in his time,
when speech was sti a populr art, belonging to a living cultute. nd
Dickens had Shakespeare behind him, and, of great creative writerc,
not only ShaLespeare'
Her, then, ii the significant upshot for us. The situation changes;
and to regard change with Profesor Plumb as'e death of e past'
would bJto contemplate with equanimity the death of e present
(whi the future so rapidly becomes). Th roots oftradition that still
as some life in it are not dead. The full range ofthe English language
is there in its incomparable literature, accessible to English-speakers
at any rate in is country, and waiting to be proved living, A new
conception of the university as society's organ for a new function
preses or realization; a conception that develops life's urgent enough
ahnmg of the new kind of efort needed if mankind is to save, for
future-growth, its full humanity. What, I have ergued, e :oncPlign
entails is the creting of an ducated public that, conscious of its
responsibility, shal intain e 'language' of creative ought and
kep the fuf potentiality alive' The notion that the currendy applauded
American *iit"r. ptov" e viality of the civilization at produced
them is absurd-and significant. What, characteristically, ey
demonstrate, is a depresing, and often repellent, poverty in the range
of experience, satisfaction nd human Potentiality ey se"T *
qo--
of, and to think all, As or e famed and flattered merican critics
wi,o *.it" about e 'British-English' classics, they seem, judged by
what ey say about them, unabe to read em. The 'language' of
heuristic'ought that major literature depends on is too alieu it
bears no reht to the human world they know, or to the kinds of
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
intellectual aPParatus ey are familiar with and too practised in
applying.
'
h"Ie.oncl p"rt of this book is devoted to Judgment and Analysis'
which I coined it:
-and I use thai formula here for the purpose for
to serve r a substitute for 'Practical Criticism'. That is, it implies,
primarily, illustrative critiques of short poems or shon passages'.I
orr't, o cor,rse, demand greement with my judgments,- though,
eoualiv 'o course', I think em sound. To repeat what I have said
Ufo tn" form of a critical judgment is, 'This is so, isn't itl', e
question, which is really one, intimating the essentially collorative
,iatur. oi criti.ism- A judgment can't be enforced, but the critic can
take-at is, benefit by-correction and suggestion' f realize-the po-em,
but in realing it L;?, to assume both that it is independent of me
and that mindi cn meet in it Criticism aims at justifying those
assumptions.
Mv 'illusuations' aim at making plain by selective concrete
demonstration e force of what I intend in positing that 'sensibility'
has an esential Part in the most important kind of thought' The
lonsest one is that in which I mmpare e passage ftom lnton1 azd
Cl"'ooatra at begins, 'The barge she sat in' (Act II, Sc' ii), with
*h Drvden did ithitin ,!ll fir Love. This necesitates a discussion
of the great change manifestd in the Engli languge between
Shakespare and dryden, which inevitably involves some reference
to the ecisive sart f modern civilization in the sevententh century'
We are brought so to t}te need-a need that is a liaison oppomrnty-
for some acq"uaintance with the development of philosophic thought
from Descartes, through what for Blake was the denial of life and
the thwarting ofhuman creativity by an oppresion he labelled'Newton
and Locke',t what may be caili the essential vindication of Blake
implicit in e thought f distinguished phi-lgsophers of this. century'
The immodesty tha; ink ofis resporsibility assens itself in that
I
i anut". I w my lack of proper philosophic qualifications, and I
asert, and stand by e assertiorr, tL,t I am justified in re"9T1:'di:.9
as I do. Th" condiction, I contend (it is dre argument
of this book)'
isturned into something both other and necessary by the considerations
that fall under 'co'presence' and 'liaison'.
I oulcl, en, urge my pupils to get Marjorie Greneh T e -R11wer
and the known, hir sllctio"-f,awiry atd Being-of M-ichael
Polanvi's esam, and, in the Oxford Paperbacks, Collingwood's ?ic
Idea of Nataie,These are books that require and repay freguentation'
53
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
I should assume that tlose working wi me had em, so that
references could be taken up and recalls checked, corrected and
amplified, Marjorie Grene's book especially I should find myself
adducing for her treatment of this, that and the other theme and
important challenge to thought. Actually I have already suggested
that students might make their start on the book by reading and
pondering chapter 6, 'Facts and Values', in connexion with ndreski's
Soeial Sciencet as 9orcer1,
I have, I hope, made plain why I think that this last should be
picked on for serious use as, in an unusual and pregnant way, highly
valuable in relation to the ends that preoccupy me. Here we have a
vigorous mind and a patent disinterestedness applied to the criticism
ofan academico-intellectual field that Andreski knows from the inside.
Equipped with indefatigably acquired knowledge, and out ofan extra-
ordinarily wide experience, he contends on behalf of standards in a
drastic criticism of the actuality. All who have thought about the
justifying function of the university know why as things are the
isocial Sciences' matter. The judgments that Andreski passes on the
academic actuality re authoritative, and we owe him gratitude' and
know the reasons for doing all we cn to Promote the circulation of
such abook. At the same time, as my commentary aimed at demonstrat-
ing, he invites, in a way notably useful to contenders for the discipline
he implicitly dismises, severe criticism of te criteria ofvalid thought
-those generally accepted-that, with explicit emphasis, he
endorses
in and fr his own work. That is, he not only confirms what we can't
but have observed in the actuality of Social Science or Socil Studies
as flourishing 'disciplines' at universities; by prompting us to make
conclusion articulate, Ile stengthens our sense that work under those
heads, even when good by his criteria, can only encourage bad thinking
about society and human life unless the inescapable limitatiors and
inczpacities of such work get clear, rm and general recognition.
These, then, are the reasons for using Social Sciences as Sorcerl
to the full.
I am no more ofrering a readingJist than a syllabus. Simply, the
books I mention seem to me essential books, books that, associated
in the given context, belong to my argument and help to define what
f have in mind, I will only add, not knowing whether or not it is
still tue nowada). that everyone capable of critical interest in my
theme knows this, that Phoeni*, the large volume of Lawrence's
critical and occzsional writin, is an inexhaustible source of resh
5+
THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
insight, pregnant suggestion' and stimulus to thought' Classical formul-
tions-they strike one as that-will be found there every time one
opens the volume.*
The ird part of this book is devoted to an examination of Foar
Quartas. There ae strong reasons for my choosing to clinch -my
aiguinent in tis way. The work is Eliot's major creative undertaking,
an no one will dispute that it is concerned with thought: the concern
is not only very apparent, but so insistently manifest in passage after
passage that to call it explicit wouldn't be misleading. The theme and
procedure are not more a matter ofthought than those of Trl e Rainbow
ind Women in Latn are, novels of which the organization and the
significance can't be understood apart from a full recognition by the
reader that what he is fotlowing is a process of heuristic thought in
which sensibility, imagination anda consciously creative use oflanguage
ae essential. ut Eliot is not a novelist; nor has he the gits of a
potential novelist. What he is exploring n Four Quartets isn't, of
iorr.", -o." his own basic and urgently Personal problem than what
Lawrence in his novels is exploring is his. Both Eliot and Lawrence
must have had a strongly positive ahntmg of what e upshot in
'signi6cance' would be-e conveyed total sense of'the living
principle' in control in either case (the problem being the nature-of
ihat t which 'we belong'). But Eliot's not having the gifts of a
novelist isn't accidental to the thisness of his personal case and his
thoughti his intense and overwhelming sense of the problem as being
first nd hst a matter of insufierable distres makes him in a limiting
way egocentric-a characteristic that refers us to the ironic significance
ofisaddiction to Dante, andofhis ability to deplore Blake's not having
Dante's advantagesf. He can't use dramatic method as it is to be ound
in major noveli. His substitute is what may be called tle-much
subtlei version employed in Four Quarets o the 'musical' method of
The Waste Lard.
This, of course, doesn't overcome the inherent Eliotic limitation;
but it lends itself with great felicity to the enforcement of my anti-
Cartesian argument, and not the les because Eliot, paradoxically (his
r Few who are familiar ith P,loerur are unlikely to be unaware of the discursire
prose of Lawrence's that is not included in that volume. I wil! however, mentioa
T )iwt in hab, sbich I draw on ia Eaglish Literature bt Our Tine and tle
Unioerity,
fI h.:ve commented otr thi io 'Justifying One's Valuatio of Blak'!, ?rte
Humax World, No. 7, page 47 ff'
55
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
has failed-to-exorcize ooint that the intellectually sophisticted representative of humanity-
Dersonal cse rr an esentially timiting paradox),
th" ehost. For to call the meod of Four Qaartets 'musical' (as
the tv the philosopher-oughi to realize vividly, and to himself, perhaps,
reealingty, ttt"t n" is (oi should be) contemplating the basic condition
,i f"-"fi implicitly does) is to emphasize that -the relation between
of Ae pititity of thught when he turns his mind on tlte nature of
e diverse puogopttt, or otherwise gpographically -sepalated Par-ts' t nguai* I discus whai I mean by saying this more than once in
is not eitheidiscursively sequential or narrative,
but tht the odenng
it essential to e ought ditrlr"it contexts in these pages, the treatment of the theme by a
u'iiO" o" rr"t.n otgrniri,tg function: is
varied approach with the changing suggestiveness entiled. seeming.to
"I i".t ot *g"ners it-"and 'esential' here points to-1 $iT:" the ofier of lgic and clarity in straightforwardly
i"ilr" Uu ,r," ,oelt, in which achievement the achieving of denition -" n*oo*,
making communicable are one' In the thought' .ust"ir,"d d.ielop-"nt could only be delusive' n a*, a good deal
ir-r,iiai of what may be ludged repetition is, I think, desirable'
*iiai"ir"at intellectul aftention in the sense atthe-theevoked
""a'rr,e d
at thinking H".e I -ill seir" on e word 'mean' which I used in e sentence
,".""ai.- i*a". can't but know he is
before e last. How do words meanl-and, inseparable question, what
r"".o f t."rilility, imagination and value-judgment play obvrously is a word? Linguisticians, finding it too mu for em
as yet, postPone
indispensable
"'1.'rr pars apat rom meaning
ea[ng at a siously wi meaning. But language
ress obvious that lvomen in Lotte or Little Dorrit is didn't favour linguistics, knew tlat
"il"ih"ught-anrl thought of a kind at m-atteYup.t"Tly is not iansuaqe. Wittgenstein, who
".;;;r;;i,h .rf co,.,.r"] u"i if "-Wit,g"nsteinians in general are as naiVe about
io hrmanity. But le mention of those works should make it
plaln
l^n u^se the distinguished Oxford philosophy tutor whose little
*r',"T*t" for demonstrative exemplication, not a major no-vel'
poetic work, which has the concentration of poetry' Une
bo& o"rl Witte"*r.in i hav" read seemed to me to be, then it is plain
but'Eliot's
that the studyf the 'linguistic philosophy' doesn't in fact Promote e
;;;H"';; it'" mere ext;nsion of 'Practical Criticism', work rough insights into e nature o language tht re most important (to anyone)
i il.".ino.-u. one can through 'Earr Qrtartets-Ltwrends tovel arr am corrfi.rmed in my conviition that we must Protect students of
of the great novels'
-' Dickens's, or anyjustified
or
'English' against the philosophic enthusiasts who
"e judgment at Conrad's 'The Secret prescribe seminars
ir"", f i,p", on Wittgenstein for them.
Sf,rJ -"v l" pt"p"rly rlescribedas p'rofound, central and.distinguished
To bJintelligent about meaning is central to 'English' as a discipline
ir"r-nirlr o*r, ihu, it mighi profitably be examin-ed as such'
in . seniina'' But, Piegnaot and fundamental of oueht,- ur, th"r" is incomparably more profrt or the literary
,turlent
"ir,
Polanyi's essay, 'Sense-Giving and SenseReading',- -the
"r*""r"tir,
;?i;i;i ""**rrph,
i,;vys'scopl:
is, 'The Secret Sharer' is a short tale and has
e it treats is, ough
implicidy sustained close attention emanded by which recommends itself as
I-J""".o-t? ri*i,"ct issue
,nouestionablv repayinq rom e beginning all the way rough, than
involng
-'- so much, isolated for treatment'
ir, rnv hour ofttiainid cerebration devoted to linguistic philoeophy
i rrir.ir" ,o o, *o further-points.that make Foar Quartets much les dismisible as
e rit choice for e purposes of illustrative demonstration' Firsdy' -.u.r, h"r" the Wittgensteinian guide is book' I won't proceed
iust a ohilosopher than e author o my titde
it op?"rr". a profoud diagnostic recoil from the civilization-ours- io d.o"lop , *..entary on at, and there is no need to do more here
"areski is, In his own way, so pesimistic' Secon<lly'
"1""i-*f,i"f, raclicai thought, along with admiration or e thar, mention Polanyib essay and the book at contins it' Polnyi
Jiif" -pari"g shows what essenti"i h"lp ir-oot ,ror-scientific field caz be
given by a
challengL q"estioning criticism and
iir""i"i"-n"itt ?r,at does this, ii scientificallv trained mind. The virtues of his contribution, however,
ffi;;; fip;t""t kind of diiagreemenL 'Importance" here' own
regards
state' ,re conditined by necesary limitations, and it is left to me' ofrering
the profit in terms of one's new ralizaton of what one's
the present kind f approa, to say ings and Iay emphases that don't
ment of position would now be.
belg to e field that he has marked out and made his'
I conclude T focal words for me at e moment are'means' and 'meaning"
Some resuming and insisting seem to me in
place before
e The ease wi which one shifts from one force of e verb 'mean' to
ai pri .i u,! p'.o""oti.". i h"u", ut
"t'y
rate implicidy' made
57
56
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE
another is significant. The protest, 'Oh, but that isn't what I mean
by the wordl might very well have issued as,'But that isn't what I
meant the word to mean', or 'What I meant to men was . . There
is a shift, but the forces aren't sharply separable-there is no ". break,
or hesitation, in the continuity. It seems to me at some presence
of the force o'intend' is necessary to the meaning of 'means'.
The full implication of this truth is sometimes slighted even by
linguistic philosophers, the reason being that it is so- basic: 'the.word
rnnr.. .'-the verb doe its work satisactorily because, without
thinking, they know what 'means' in the nature of things means'
But in a Wittgensteinian enterprise such unconsciousness, intermittent
and partial ,iit .ry be, is not good enough; it produces gratuitous
logic, gymnastic faluity, unprofitable conclusions and intellectual
fristr"tin, Thought about language should entail the full and frm
recognition that words 'mean' because individual human beings have
meat the meaning, and that there is no meaning unless individual
beings can meet inlt, the comPleting ofthe element of intend' being
represented by the responding someone's certitude that the last con-
diiion obtain. Individual human beings can meet in a meaning be-
cause language-or let us rather say a language, meaning the English
"(fol
language there is no such thing as nguage in general)-is for
the in any present a living actuality at is organically ore with te
'human wrld' they, in growing up into it, have naturally taken- for
granted. There is in the language a central core in which for generations
i-ndividual speakers have met, so that the rneeting takes place as some-
ing inevible and immediate in relation to which it would seem
grat;itous to think of'meeting' as being involvedjn meaning, or of
or,ventiors at all. At the other extreme there is the specialist intel-
lectual's succesul attempt-successful in regard to the special com-
munity he addresses-to attach a definite and limiting force to a term
for its'use in the given 6eld' But both this simple kind ofconvention-
fixing and the achieved linguistic originalities entailed in the thinking
of pfound phitosophers depend on the central core-without it they
couldn't be achieved.
I am prompted to insist in this way on the hardly disputable truth
that language belongs to the humanly created human world' as along
wi it oei thought, by one in especial of the critical reservations
urged against me by Ian Robinson, who nevertheless refers to my work
in-v"rv-flatt"rinq ierms, in his recent book, The Survival of Englih'
He says (page zlg):'Leavis is belabouring Eliot with what amounts
58
TIIOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIYITY
to jargon; for all e work done on the words earlier in the
*say, ahnung, xins and selfhood come out a little pat, and the
inverted commas will hardly rescue "identity" for the common
language.'
I conclude that Robinson judges Faur Qaortets nore favourably
than I do. But what I want to question immediately is the judgment
to which he commits himself at my expense u/i'jargon'. If my use
of those words justifies tlat description, it seems inconsistent in him
to find a high valuation of my work at all possible, and be able to eel
that he inls well of its spirit and aims. For the distinction between
'identity' and 'selhood' is basic to the realization that the 'human
world' on which both our sense of reality and our attainment of
objectivity depend is a product of collaborative human creativity.
Does he, zs in consistency he surely should, include the'human world'
(inverted commas used there instead of e initial capitals that would
else be needed to advert the reader to the special force) and the'third
realm'under Jargon'l And do tese also in my work, or does either
of tem, 'come out a little pat'?
As I put them round 'identity' I've been in the habit of calling the
inverted commas 'quotation marks', but I've at the same time thought
of te insistence on the Blakean derivation, and so on the distinction
that Blake makes, as a helpful way of reminding the reader o te
special force that needs to be realized' Mr Robinson's suggestion,
explicit in 'come out a little pat', is that what I offer as ought is too
facile, and that I don't, essential as they are to my purpose, do enough
to justify my reliance on the terms he lists.
I assume that there are very few, iany, pieces ofthinking for which
finality might be claimed, and the charge of inconsistency bring I
against Robinson doesn't mean that I claim nality for any work of
my own, or dismiss The Suruir-ul of English as worth little attention.
I
On te,contrary, it is one of the books to which send students as
repaying, in relation to my teme and argument, close critical study.
'Inconsistency' points to a twofold profit: it is a recognition ofthe way
in which Robinson, committed as a conscious ally to the same c:luse,
reinforces directly my line of argument, while at the sme time
evoking the critical response that, taking excePtion and registering
disagreement clearly formulated, ministers to understanding and
strengthens one's grasp of the tru. At any rate-for I am taking
exception-f see Robinson's hints of fundamental critical censure
(ey are clearly t*rat, but remin undeveloped) as unintended
59
 THE LIVING ?RINCIPLE
confirmation of the need for the emphasis I lay when I insist on
'English' as a distinctive discipline of ought.
iru.p."a, tlen, that the paradoxical uneasines he betrays is a
tribute io te nfluence and prestige of departmental philosophy' I
know that I refer back a greal deal' invoking the basic reasoning
(which is not a philosopher's) only allusively, ough I should have
ihought that I had given it sufficiently in a number of places to be
safe gainst that 'come out a little pat'. Robinson doesn't agree'- Yet
he ha read, I think, the chapter on Little Dorrh in the book on
Dickens my wife and I produced togeter. My aim in e chapter
was to define and appraise justly the distinctive character of Dickens's
sreat novel, and it was that aim which led to what I intimate in the
i,1., 'Di.k"nt and Blake', I have given the critique-which is an
expsition, the best I am capable of writing, of e meaning, bearing
an necessity o Blake's antittresis, 'identity' and 'selfhood" - .
I am not intending to suggest that I have produced something that
should be regarded as final and above criticism; but I shouldn't be
honest if I did.r't say that the chapter seelns to me a piece of serious
thinking about the iundamentals in question and one at, judged as
such, dewes better than to be lightly dismised. Robinson's curious
abilitv to ignore it, curious because so much more than merely gratuit-
our, ""rnr",o me explained by the influence on him of inappropriate
criteria; criteria of what serious tinking is that go wi a philosophic
training. However that may be, that th ere mal be too docile a modesty
in fact'of the profesional ssumptions (and that there is point in my
insisting as I o) is in any case brought home to me by this on the
page preceding (238):
And yet Leavis himself in the great essay on Blake I had the privilege
get ings
of publishiog car't reit, in a minor way, the attemPt
-to
neaity and fiially ti"d up, by au enusiastic endorsement ofthe campaign
of Piofessor Mrjorie rene. I too have learned things from Professor
Grene's work, anil especially fiom some of he associate', and don't
wish to sound ungateful; but the efort to see her group as hang
successfully initia a philosophical revolutiou is not only unconvincing
in itself, ii is falling into e Blakean tmp of thintiug at revo]utious
in philosophy caz bi directed in the sewice ofa lrlar-which could onlT
be i modern variant of a finished Jerusalem.
This is perversity itself-ough if it had come from a profesional
philosophei it woud have seemed too natural and expctable for,that
ior,l t -""t t]r" case. What the parallel between Blake's positing
6o
THOUGHT, LANGUGE ND OBJECTIVITY
Jerusalem' as the end of proces and change in a reversal of the Fall
and e kind ofuse I want to Promote of The Knower and the Known?
Robinson imputes to me a kind of concern with philosophy that is
not mine, and ignores my avowed and wholly consistent motive for
starring Marjorie Grene's book. The student I have in mind doesn't
belong to a department o philosophy; his central concern is wi
creatiye literature. It is my hardly paradoxical contention that his
acquaintance-everyone assumes that ere should be some-with the
movement ofphilosophic thought as it has affected the cultural climate,
especially the movement from Descartes to our own time, should have
enough reality to tell in his own thinking. There is a great deal of
literature, and anyone who tries to draw a boundary round intelligent
literary study discovers how hard it is to limit the field, and what
diversities it must include: the problem, philosophy being in question,
is to ensure that the time and energy consumed shall result in real
intellectual profit-and of the kind required. It is a very formidable
problem.
No one put me on to Marjorie Grene's book, and when I found it
in Hefier's philoeophy corner, and, reading in it
here and ere,
realized that it was what I (without much hope),
had long been seeking
I wasn't supposing that the uthor had'initiated a successful philo-
sophical revolution', and I knew nothing ofany group to which she
belonged. Simply, I saw she had a good mind, was a cultivated Person,
and had written the rare book that bore helpfully on my problem-a
book tlat could be used by me and the kind ofstudent I was proposing
to work with.
It is true that the virtues of ?a Knower and the Known are condt-
tioned by the fact that the uthor has a decided point of view, and that
it entails her challenging the Cartesian dualism and deploring its
persistence in the modern mind. But Robinson will hardly object to
my saying that I think her right in this: after all, e seems to aPproYe
of my ttitude towards Blake. I'm not so sure that he doesn't obj ect-or
I
perhaps should say, that the academic philosophical ambience that
he has found stimulating doesn't object-to my coming out in favour
I
of Michael Polanyi. In any case' the extracts have quoted from
The Sanhtal of English promPt me to ttris protestation: e author
ofa book that has the distinctive purpose of Robinson's is committed
to e recognition at a philosopher exceeds his warrant if he judges
that, without a departmental philosophic training, a literary critic
presumes unjustifiably in arriving at an adverse conclusion about the
6t
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIYITY
training from-the and tlese tend to imply what Lawrence points to diagnostically. witl
Cartesian dualism; or a radically difierent kind o
the triad, 'ego, will ra ;a"u'. The need for a word at eliminates
certainly not es relevant-makes clear arrilal at
"frif.r""f.i"-"* this last sug[estion is implicit in Blake's "'I
know that they are not
Iu.h , tor.lrrion a duty, something intellectually incumbent- Oi czn think ;f him as saying of te efion of creativity,
repeat in support of this protestation some of e thrngs
that -ir,"".'
I will
'Though in a sense it is mine, I know that it is not mine''
critic an everv inielligent reader of creative literature is that) is
^;;;; ;; tell im.elf. YMind' is 'there' onlv in individual minds' I fiist found that I needed the word 'nisus' in discussing 1r-
'l hey Wednesdat. The problem ere is to define the sense in which the
Minds meet in a 'word'-a word that has a meaningf,ul context'
context, is considered the unit of thought' oo"t of 'fhe Holw Men' has become religious' He will not afirm
-""t ir, *hut"o"r, in the and with an elaboration of procedure that t.cruse h. crnnot, ,,ot having left sufficiently behind him e complete
;;, ;i,h ;"t" dicolty,
nihilism of that waste-land poem: affrmation attempted merly
*uk s th" burines of meeting a critically conscious activity' ey meet because o e desperte intenaity of his need would be empty'
W'ill
in a poem. A poem is'there', a meaning is '*here,' b*..n9t.it
tl'::-:
ancl ego (selfhood)-cannot genuinely affirm' But wat he discovers or
the 'ihere' is a way ofsaying that, tough not in sPacer rt ls'concrete tltat
in a postulating or a theoretrcal way' u.rint in r,it -rjor Poet'slealing; with e English language
I
-that is, not something merely, and merely deep in him er i, Christirr, nirus-that is how I put it in ofiering
thought of. The antithe"is, 'public' in the ordinary sense'
to lrr"lus" ,lsh-Wednesday, where the paradox so manifest in e
tl"ii";, ;*t echaustive. Th" po". that we acceptingly discuss-the
ere ls an lmPresslve ,".ond p*--rc..ptance in profound.ly liturgical and bibtical idiom
'acceotinslv' meaning at we agree
jlst the black marks on paper) between us-is anrl 'music' of deth as extinction-ii repesentative of the whole
.r.","d ir,g (not
sequence.
;;;. i .rr" phrase the 'ird realm' to designate the order 'Eliot's is a curious cse, as I point out in my commentry on Foar
.i i"i"n-f""1"a
say nat,,rlly, 'the order of reality'-to which. the
poem
Oaartets. and paradox characteiizes his whole status as a major poet'
belongsl A poim is nothing aPrt from its meaning, and
meanrngs
ft" t g"niut t*lich is of the 'identity'), and the creative lisus- works
*
belons to e 'third realm'.
impresi-vely in'him, but something in him too makes him deny human
l',?lirrk .f ih, So*;rol of English as a book at e envisaged
should us-an intellige-nt use of it will be critical
ctiviw-he ,.*ils from being responsible' The denial, which comes
"r*,.i'n"glirlr' from th selfhood (for Eliot is in the 'placing' sense a'case'), gravely
;.1;;;;fit literary judgments that idisagree with' and.related
io me invalid; these would be opportunltles.tor affects the quality'of his afirmation when he ofiers to afirm-and
assumptions t}at seem
Four Oaartits is edicated to an offer of afi rmation' What is offered'
il*";. I am confirring my adverse comments to points regarding it s.es to me, is decidedly not satisffng' No major artist, I am apt
issr"s of principl" in such way that recognition of
the virtues of the
to the efiect that here the author seems ready io say, is a'crse'. Yet one couldn't hppily call Eliot minor' So he is
book entails criticism
io "rv ,t" postulates that legitimize his undertaking' I intend- no in hii special limiting way unique'
,hn)ns. the oei woid, is intimately related-if, that is, one uses
i"r fr." I say that I am gteful to him or prwiding so good an
it. r -.J"if. seeins that I had used it a number of times in writing
"iot f". reit'erating a need emphasis-an occasion that involves
inappropriate oarts othi, book,Lst about for an equivalent of the unnaturalizable
focusing on the insidis difficulty of escaping from the
iord. I ound no English substitute' Lawrence in e nfu af Thonas
criteria of 'ought'.
--'iolir*" Hard't.l noticed, useJ'inklirrg'-use. it more an once' But, pondering
q."!,ions, along with Blake's 'identity' and 'selfhoo' my
*" "d of "tgu*ent for w-hich I should want it, I decided that it
' ;; ;ir; s. i have" clistin guished between tle.se- -t.ilo English -weight-hadn't grave enough charge ofsuggestivenes'
"i;;;'
-iiitrirt,
tosraphicallv be-cause, while 'niirs' is in the now old New
-wolds hadn't enough a

'Inklins' ca"n tranilate 'Ahnung' as used in some Germn contexts,

Arrn is unnaturalized German that must clearly remain
'N'isus' is irreplaceable' In explaining its necessity
one but it n hardly suggest anticipatory apprehension that carries the
.""ri.i"a. weight implicit il" 'fo'tfoai"g', whi is often e right rendering of
r,r.--t ii""r." someing like Blake's distinction' 'Effort' doesn't
'Ah"nung'. If Robinson's point had been that I lacked
purpose' the warrant
suffice; it implies conscio, explicitly realized, and deliberate
63
6z
 THE LIVING PRINCIPLE THOUGHT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
for tryinq to invest e German word with the range of suggestiveness influence it deserves, would make it of the greatest importance' I
,eqrii.d-for my argument I should have conceded that he might be shall without misgiving continue to stlt Knlwing and' Being for t\e
crs", I would prefer not to use n unnatutalizable word' students I work i'ith.-This doesn't mean that I don't continue to
ridht. Ir,
"N"u"rt.i"tt
"ny I need a word to go with 'nisus', and, having used hold to the ideal necessity of co-presence. The standards observed in
deDartments of Dhilosophv have sme relevance for our discipline, and
'ahnung' before,I will-without the capital-ktep it here (remaining
-iv pro*ote iure.' definitionbenefit and understanding and serve the
ready io take informed criticism seriously). The essential thing is to
ofthought. But the ofco-presence, it seems to me,
realize what force and implication 'anticiPatory apprehension' has "duan."m.rrt for us'- .
wouldn't be merely, or even (perhaps) mainly,
when I say that I need a word for it. The word by itselt of course,
I Whatever term'is to be paired with 'nisus', the 'anticipatory aPPre-
couldn't ctnvey themi should in any case send my students to phrase) it would stand for involve,s our
hension'(to repeat my clumsy
Collingwood's ommentaries on Alexander and WhiteheadinThe ldea conception of time' I will
beliefin human creatvity, an iherefore our
of Nature andto chapter g,'Time and Teleology', of Marjorie Grene's two of
ouote now. from three iff"rent arthors, three short pssages,
h, Knower and the Known. Professor Grene, it will be noted, refers book-I quoted before'
in that chapter to the work of Michael Polanf and insists on the hi.h-.1r.*h"t" than in this have

reletant importance of 'tacit knowing' as he postulates it.
I illustrate here my attitude towards philosophy-my sense of te
orooer reladon betwen the field of that kind of discipline and what I
iuili oll *y o-tt fie1d' It is undeniable at philosophy has profoundly
afiected language and so nonlhilosophical thought and the 'human
world'. Mv-contention in tis book is at, dealing very largely with
what te sa*e problems and issues ofhuman life, there is another
and decidedly difierent discipline of ought at it is peculiarly im-
"re
portant tod"y to get full recognition for and to foster. Those conscious
f responsiblity for fostering it must, when it is a question of recom-
mending philoiophic reading to their student collaborators, trust to
their owiludgm"t. They will very likely have to stand up to insistent
profesional dissent, but tley ought to have convictions of wich ey
Low th"y must have the courage, and they ought to.be able to.tell
themselves that the qualifications for tis kind of decision are eirs-
with e responsibilitY.
The critria of approval to be exPected from a dePartment of
ohilosophy will be too much those implicit in the current ideal of what
ih" ,pproubt" d.partmentl Product should be; tey are very unlikely
indeed' to be thos proper to the rival discipline. Who has not herd
from a departmental representative tlat a philosopher wit rvh91 e
speker doesn't agree is nevertheless a 'good' philosopher! Such
obs"rvations may bi a valuable challenge to thought, but the criteria
implied are not ours'
The rst is from Collingwood (?a ldea of Natare, page r 55):
This at any rate seems clear; that since modem science is committeil to a
ew of e physical u verse as nite, celtainly in space and probably
in time, the actity which this same science iiletrtifies with Datte!
cannot e a self-creaied or ultimately self-depetrdent activitl' The world
of nature or phpical world as a whole, on anysuch view, oust ultioately
depenil for its eristence on soroething other an itself'
The second is from Marjorie Gtene (The Knower and the Kruwn,
Page 2++)l
Knowins is essentially temporal activi directed temporal activi
drawn bi the future u[ oiwhat we wish to undelstard' Knowing, I
have areued errlier, iiessentially leaming; and learning is a tec pheno-
menon,"in which the eud in sight, wen only guesseil at, draws us toward
a solution. In the knowing at least of comprehensive entities, moreover,
this pull from the future, reflecteal in our efolt to uaderstand, charac-
teri kewise the reatitF we are stivilg to hnow' For achievement ' ' '
offe. . . .
is a penzsive character
The third is the opening of Polanyi's essay, 'Life's Irreducible Struc-
ture' (Knowing and Being, Page zz5)':
Ifall Den wele exteloinateil, ig would not aFect the laws ofinanimate
nature. But the production of machines would stop, and uot till men
arose agail coulil machioe"g be formeil once more'

i not shaken, en, in my recommendation and use of ?e

"- lfhese ree quotations taken togeer suggest-at least, $at ]I
Knruter and the Known. I immodestly know, further, that Polanyi's
intention-a major kind of profit students of 'English' stand to derive
originality is very impresive, and at its influence, if it had e
65
64.
 THE LIVING ?RINCIPLE
from their philosophic reading. They would of course ponder these
passages in e respective contexts, and the profit would be digerent
irom at which students of philosophy are tuned to receive. It wouid
be taken into a distinctive kind of inking, and enrich it-theirs, as
students of what creative writers do with language' They would have
read em, I say, in eir contexts, whi ey would not have con-
sidered e les attentively for being literary students. I might very
well have prompted those I worked with to read or re'read, Marjorie
Grene's apter 6 nd Polanyi's esay in the course of some scusion
of the Eliotic self-contradiction-the parado:rical will to deny human
crativity that plap so large a part in determining the efrec- o Four
'-
Qaartcts,
All three passages in eir different ways register the conviction-
e impelling principle, for each of e autors, of his thinking-that
necessry word'. The second passage, Marjorie Grene's,
is concerned explicitly with the mode oflife's asserting itself, developing
into humanity, and creating-as it continually recreates-the 'human
:pull from the future', as the brief passage recognizes, is
world', The
at te same time 'anticipatory apprehension', for knowing itself is
achievement; ahnung goes wi 'nisus'-terms for which the'laws of
innin ,te nature' have no use' Nevereless anyone who reads e
whole of the esay to which e ird passage belongs will know dlat
Polanyi no more an Marjorie Grene posits a mere external relation
between mind and body, thought and e:<tension, e knower and e
reality of which 'inanimate nature' is a constituent' And in the first
pasage, e context of which is pregnant in suggestion, Collingwood
p.onunces it to be clear that e activity which physical science
iidentifies with matter cnnot be a self-created or ultimately self-
dependent activity'.
1 am not contmplating that the student of 'English' will develop
philosophically or eologically such pasages. It is as dedicated to
is own discipline of thought at he ould profit' He should in the
6rst place become more perceptive and intelligent in his response to
major worls ofliterature, and more finely and penetratingly articulate
in registering the signicance, te thought, ey communicate.
Wlat my own ipproa and rgument prompt h:re ale Trtail
reflexions aLout e English language. I have made dre point drat it
rq)resents a long continuity of appraised human experience-or, to
resort very relntly to a word from e second quoteil passage,- of
human 'achievement', But even this Iast way of putting it says nothing
66
TTTOUGIIT, LANGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
specific enough-is too large and loose-to suggest e comP!1a91uat;y
hrve in mi"d. The English of ?izzar leaders, daily talk, Mr Heath's
speeches and Bertrand Russell's boola gives us a modernity, a Present,
in whi the past may be said to livei it does essentially represent a
long continuity. Change is inetable, for living entaih change. But,
as lan Robinson's e<amination of what the modernizers of the
Auorized Version have done brings home to us, change is not
necesarilv for the sood. The modernizers, with all teir knowledge,
eir cultilztion an their assured earnestness, belong to e modern
world. This was eir qualication for e undertaking they were
charged with: to purge biblical and liturgical language of the un-
modrn and strange-of all that might strike the 'ordinary' man and
womn as unnatural (at is, at odds wi the Engli they naturally
speak, or use in eir letters, or exPect to hear in an enlightened
addres on education).
Modern English in tat sense rePresents drastic impoverishment;
e asumptioni implicit in it eliminate from thought, and from e
valuations and testedjudgments that play so essential a part in thought,
very important elements of human experience-elements that linguistic
.or,irrui,y had once made available. Actually, up to the Present- (let
us hope ii may still be said) a richer continuity has been maintained
than 'rnodern inglish' gives us. ft has been maintained (and to main-
tain a language ii to develop it) because we have so long and rich a
literary traditic,n. I mean by 'tradition' someing liy-ing-, and ere is
no living literary tradition without an educated public that reads and
responds-and so'(a public being a community) keeps alive an English
fuli of non-'modern' ralues, promptings and potentialities'
This brin me back to the point of my quoting e first of he ree
passages, tha:t from Collingwood, e concluding sentence of which
runs JThe world of nature, or physical world as a whole, on any such
view, must depend on someing other than itself.' I thought of at
passage when (page 44 above) I
said of e Englhh l,ngu,g":..'-ft
k""-th" indiui"rl human being, e particularizing actuality of life,
back to the dwn ofconsciousness and beyond, and does this in fostering
the ahnung of. . . e as yet unrealized, the achieved discovery of
which demands creative efiort.' The 'individual human being' was I
inking of here was in the first place tlte creative writer, of whom in
especia am thinking still. It follows that my mind is not on possible
theological or philosphical developments of the theme whi
-to
Collingwood's sentence points. I am concerned wi a diferent use
67
 THE LIYING PRINCIPLE
o language from Collingwood's, or Andreski's or Russell's or tltat
any eologian-a use whi, I insist, is also ought
,{ll writers of major cretive works are driven by e need to achieve
a fuller and more penetrating consciousness of that to which we belong,
or of the 'Something oer tan itself' on which the 'physical world
ultimately depends'. It is inseparable from the need to strengen the
human graE of a significance to be apprehended in life at will
inform and guide creativity. The English language in the full sense
is alive, or becomes for e creative writer alive, with hints, apprehen-
sions and intuitions. They go back to earlier cultural phases, The
writer is alive in his own time, and te character of his response, e
selective individual nature ofhis creative receptivitn will be determined
by his sense-intensely individual-of the modern human condition.
He needs all the resources of the language his growing command
ofhis eme can make spontaneous-can recruit towards the achieving
of an organic wholeness: his theme itself is (being inescapably a
prompting) an efiot to develop, in realizing and presenting it, living
continuity. The less he has to ignore or play down in achieving his
'heuristic conquest' out ofrepresentative human experience, e better
-if we judge by the major artistns implicit intention. And here is te
occasion to hark back to the paragraph I have quoted from Lawrence-
the paragraph ending:
THOUGHT, LNGUAGE AND OBJECTIVITY
of totality', for, in the nature of ttrings, ere can be no one total upshot;
for every major writer it is different-ere re many potentialities and
no statistically determinable values. We call a writer major when we
judge that his wisdom, more deeply and robusdy rooted, represents a
more securely poised resultant, one mole fully comprehensive and
humanly better cenred-considerations bearing crucially on future
growth-than any that any ordinarily brilliant person could offer us.
Wisdom we may call a higher plausibility, profoundly judicious and
responsible. For in this realm of thought there is nothing certain or
provable, and no finality.
I will conclude with some resuming emphases. Where erc is an
educated public e living principle will be a living presence and have
some influence. Where it has, it rvill tell sometimes on writen (say)
of Times leaders. Statesmen of all parties will, in such a civilization,
now and tlen find themselves recognizing that if ey continue to
talk and act and bureaucratize on the blank assumption tlnt rescuing
Britain from its plight and curing its malady is a matter ofensuring a
good percentage grow-rate, fair distribution and industrial peace
they will most certainly ensure a major human disaster.

Anything more unlite song, spontaaeous song, woulil be ioposible to

ioaginel a strange bawngyell that followeil the oures ofa tune. It was
not ke savages: savages have subde rh/thms. It was not e animals:
aa;lLaJs rean soethiug when ttrey yell. It wae ke nothing on earth,
and it was called sioging. . . . $rhat could possibly becooe of such a
peoplg a people in wlom the ving intuitive facult, was as dead as
nails, and or7 queer mechanical yells, and uncanny will-power
reuaiuedl

The 'living intuitive faculty' is not e 'living principle', by whi

term I mean what e major artist as I have aracterized him strives
to realize or to become; but, in e nature ofhis inspiration, he knows
the urgency of the meaning conveyed in Lawrence's prose. The
'living intuitive faculty' is at the root o e 'living principle', and is
felt to be strongly dlere in that English language in terms of which
e writer lives his creative life. The 'living principle' itself is an
apprehended totality of what, as registered in e language, has been
won or established in immemorial human ling, I san 'an apprehendecl
68 69
 n

Judgment and Analysis

(r)
'THOUGHT' ND EMOTIONL gUALITY
Nates in the Aaafiss of PoetrY

y roor tlese two poems, which present an obvious contrast, for a

I 'comparison' that should initiate discussion, from the o1d Oxford
Bnt of Engtith lerse, whih, as a large collection that contained bad
and indifierent as well as good poems, we-my studens having it
too-used a great deal up to the outbreak of the last war-

(a) TheT told me, Heraclitus, ey told me you were dead,

They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter teas to shed.
I wept as I remember'd how often you and I
Had tired e sun with talking and seut hio down e sty.

Ard now that thou art lying, my d.ear old Carian guesq
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;
For Death, he taLeth all away, but then he cauot take.

() Proucl Maisie is io the wood,

Walking so earlY;
Sweet Robin sits on the bush,
Singing so rarely.

'Tellme, thou bonny bird,

When shall I marrT mel'
-'When six braw gendemen
Kirlnard shall carrY Ye.'

7
 .THOUGHT' AND EMO:CIONAL BUAI,ITY
JUDG MENT AND ANALYSIS
'Who makes the bridal bed, No motion has she now, no orce;
Birdie, say trulyl' She neither hears nor sees;
-'The grey-headed sexton Ro1l'd round in eart!'s diurnal course,
'W'it
That delves the grave duly. rocks, and stones, and trees.

'The glow-work o'er grave and stone () Breah, breat, break,

Shall light thee steady; On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
The owl from the steeple sing And I 'ould that Ey tongue could utter
Welcome, proud lady!' The thoughts tiat arise in me.
O well for the fisherman's boy,
When we look at Herarlitus we that the directly emotional and
see That he shouts lfith his sister at play!
personal insistence distinguishing it is asociated with an absence of O v'ell for the sailor lad,
core or substance: the poem seems to be all emotional comment, the That he sings in his boat or the bal!
alleged justifying situation, the subject ofcomment, being represented And the stately shiPs go on
by loosely evocative generalities, about which the poet eels vaguely To their haven under the hill;
if intensely' (the 'intensity' of this kind of thing is conditioned by But O for the touch ofa vanish'd hand,
vagueness). Again, e emotion seems to be out tere on the page, And e sound ofa voice that is still!
whereas in reading Proud Mahie we never seem to be offered emotions BreaL breat, break,
as suchi the emotion develops and de6nes itselas we grasp the dramatic At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
elements the poem does offer-the data it presents (at is the effect) But the tender glace of a day that is dead
with emotional 'disinterestedness'. For 'disinterestednes' we can Will neve come back to me.
substitute 'impersonality', withwhich termwe introduce a critical topic
of the $t importance. No one can doubt that Wordsworth wrote his poem because of
something profoundly and involuntarily sufiered-sufiered as a personal
Someone may comment that, on the one hand, for Scott, whose
calamity, but the experience has been so impersonalized that the e$ect,
poetic impulse clearly came not from any inescapable pang exaerienced
in his immediately personal life, but from an interest in ballads and u, -u"h ,. that of Proad Maisie, s one of bare and disinteested
presentment. Again, though the working this time doesn't so obviously
in the ballad convention, the impersonality of his poem was an easy
pompt to a diagrammatic schematization, the emotional power is
achievement, while, on the other hand, absence of impersonality in
generated between the two stanzas, or between e states represented
the handling ofpoignant emotion needn't be accompanied by the self-
cherishing emotionality, the wallowing complaisance, of Heraclitas. by e stanzas: 'she was, she is not'-the statement seems almost as
bare and simple as that. But the statement is concretg and once the
lfhese matters can be carried further, and the essential distinctions
given force, only by close and varied reference to the concrete. Here reading has been completed the whole poem is seen to be a complex
organization, charged with a subtle life. In reosPect the first stanza
is a contrast analogous to the last, but a contrast in which the'im-
personal'poem unmistakably derives from a seismic personal experience, takes on new signiGcance:
while the obviously emotional poem is not suspect,lke Heraelitus, of A slumber did my sPirit seal;
being a mere indulgence in the sweets of poignancy: I had no human fears

-the full force of ttrat 'human' comes out: the conditions of the
(o) A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears: human situation are inescapable and there is a certain hubris in rhe
She seemecl a thing that could not feel security of forgetul bliss. Again, e 'human' enhances the ironic
The touch of earthly years. force of 'ing' in the next line:

72 t5
 .THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL SUALITY
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
She seemed a thing that could not feel hishest ooetic achievement at its true wonh and is not very likely to
The touch ofearttY Years. b"""t ,li ,trong or sure in the kind of judgment that discriminates
beween Break, break, break and, Heraclitus.
In the second stanza she is a ing-a thing at, along with the rocks 'Inerior in kin-by what standardsl Here we come to e point
and stones and trees with which she is at which literary criticiim, as it must, enters overtly into questions of
emotional hygine and moral value-more generally (there seems no
Roll'd round in ealth's diurnal course,
other adequie phrase), of spiritual heal. It seems best not to say
in reality feel tle touch of earthly years and enjoys a real
cannot iurther bv wav o immediate answer to the challenge' By
"nvthins
immunitv from death. The 'diurnal', chosen apparently for its time" we have ciosed-the discussion of impersonality, a theme that
scientifrc nakedness and reinforcing as it does that stating bareness will come up in explicit form again, a great deal more will have been
with which the diction and tone express the brutal finality of the said to eluciate, both directly and indirectly, the nature ofthe answer'
fact- has actuallv, at the same time, Potent evocatlve torce: lt Puts
a The immediate business is to push on with the method of exploration
it in an itronomical setting and evokes the vast inexorable bv concrete analysis-arnlysis of judiciously assorted instances'
"'f".t ' The pairs of poems tht we have examined as yet have presented
resularitv of the planetary motions, the efrect being analogous to that
of"the eclosing morning-night contrast of Proud Mahie' at.or,g rnd prt"r,i aontrasts. It is time to Pass on to a comPaison where
n Brea, ok, bteoi wi "gain have the poem that ofiers emotion the essential distinction is less obvious:
,lirectlv-th poem in which tle emotion seem to be 'out ere' on
emotion, in full force from (a) Sofdy, in the dr-rsk, a woman is singing to me;
th. o^". If -" read the poem aloud, the
Taking me back down the vista ofyears, till I see
itself in the plangency of tone.and movement that
it pning, A ch sitting under the piano' in the boom ofrhe tingling strings.
" ",r"*s this time feel moved to-a
is cop.llJ upon us. We do not, however, And pressing-the sma[ pised Get ofa mother who smiles as she sings'
;]srni;!r; judgme.'t. The poet is clearly one. of distinguished gift'
In spite of royself the insidious mastery ofsong
rv" rrr'a".iU. that behin the Poem there-h a genuinely personal
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong - -
ursencv. and we are not ready to accuse him ot belng moveo Prlmarltv
bu"th"'niovment of being poignantly moved-ough we can Yey
To oH unday evenings at home, with winter outside
too much And hymns in the cosy Padour, the tinkling piano our guide'
radily imagine a rendering of the Poem that should betray
now it is vain for the singer to burst into clanour
-''Jn"t",of the PoignancY'
enioyment So
i" * hlt sugfiestion' we glimpse a way-ofgetting teyond With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

a neutrallv descriptive account of the differences between the two Of childish dayr is upon me, my manhood is cast
securer kind.of Down in the flood oiremembrance, I weep like a chilil for the past'
;"; #" cn say that Wordsworth's poem istoa make it a point
I.ii"u"-"",. If sonmne should comment that
,o.inst a oo"rn that it lends itself more readily to abuse is to assume,a (l) Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
the challenge dectly Tears from the deptb of some divine despair
z?eat deal, it will perhaps be best not to take uP
Brii" ra""r". anothei proposition: an emotional habit znswering to Rise in the heart, and gathe to the eyes,
In looking on the appy Atutl-6elds,
ii. of artot, breik, ireak would need to be regarded critically'
And thinking of the days that are no more.
fh"!o",, *" .r" .ay, whose habitual mode-whose emotional habit-
^oa"
*u. ,'"pr"r"n,"aby'at po.m would not only be. very limited; we Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
," fid him noticeably given to cerain weaknesses and That brings our friends up from the underworld,
ri-f"r',fr"t, ,rt" reader who canntiee at Tenrrpon s poem' wi
"i,"rii'..p."i Sad as the last which reddens over one

,iL dirtir,"tion and refinement, yields a satisfaction inferior.in kind

it That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days at are no more.
to that represented by Wordsworth, cannot securely aPpreciate the
75
7+
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
Ah, sad and strange as iu dark summer dawns
The earest pipe ofbalawaken'd birds
To dying eary when uuto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strauge, e days that are no more.
Dear as reuellbe'd hisses after cleattr,
Anil sweet as ose by hopeless fancy feign'd
On ps at are for others; deep as love,
Deep as Erst love, anil wild wi a regreg
O Death in Life, the days at are no Eo!e.
Neier of these poems answers to the description of'bare present-
ment'. Bo of them look pretty emotional: that is, ey make an
insistent direct offer of emotion; they incite patendy to an immediate
'moved' response. Tackling that most dangerous eme, e irrevo-
cable past, each flows 'from the heart' in swelling and lapsing move'
ments that suggest the poignant luxury of release, e loosing of e
reservoirs. At first sight (a), with is banal phrases-'vista of years',
'the insidious mastery of song', 'the heart of me weeps', 'the glamour
ochildish dap', its invocation of music, and the explicit'I weep like
a child for the past'with whi it concludes-might seem, if either of
the poems is to be discriminated against as sentimental, to be te one.
But even at rst reading through of te pair it should be plain that
there is a difierence of movement between em, and tat tle move'
ment of (a) is, by contrast, te subder. Agairst e simply plangent
f,ow of () we feel it as decidedly complex.
When we e:camine is effect of complexity we find it is a*sociated
with the stating mnner that, in spite of e dangerous emotional
swell, distinguishes (a) from (). And when we e:ramine this efect
of statement we find t it goes with particularity to which () corresponding to e 'vain', and marking a correlated ough difrerent
ofers no counterpart. For e banalities instanced do not represent
everything in the poem; e'vista of years'learls back to something
sharply seen-a very specific situation at stands tere in its own
right; so that we might emend 'stating' into 'constating' in order to
it-
describe t{rat efiect as of prose sttement (we are inclined to call
but e situation is vividly realized) which mrks e manner' The
child is 'sitting under dte piano, in the boom o the tingling strings'
and 'pressing the small poised feet' of its moer-we note at
'poised', not only because of its particularity, but because e word
seems to be significant in respect of an essential, though unobtrusive,
quality of the poen. The main immediate point, however, is that in
76
'THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL gUALITY
all this panicularity we have sometling quite other than banal romantic
generality: is is not e common currency of sentimental evocation
or anything of e kind. The actuality of e remembered situation is
unbeglamouring, becoming more so in e second stanza, with e
'h)'rnns'and the'tinlling piano'. Something is, we see, held and
presanted in this poem, and the presenti ngnvolves an attitude towards,
an element of disinterested valuation. For all e swell of emotion the
critical mind has its part in the whole; the consaation is at e same
time in some measure a placing. That is, sensibility in e poem doesn't
work in complete divorce from intelligence; feeling is not divorced
rom thinking: however the key terms are to be dened, these pro-
positions at any rate have a clear enough meaning in this context.
But to return to e'tinkling piano': we note at it sands in
contrast to the'great piano appassionato' of the last stanza, and, along
with e'hymns', to e music tat started e emotional flood:
So now it is vaia or e siDger to bunt into claloour
W e great black piano appassionato.
We note further that in the ordinary sentimental poeticlity inspired
by the 'insidious mastery of song' it would not be 'vain': e poet
would be swept away on the flood of e immediate, represented by
e emotional vagueness into which e 'music' would be translated.
It is a remarkable poet who, conveying te 'insidious mastery' and e
'flood' so potendy, at the same time fixes and presents wi such
specificity e situation he sharply distinguishes from the immediate.
It is unusual, and suggests lines on which we might explain our finding
e 'poised' of e first stanza a word to underscore.
But of course we have pased over a phrse in te second stanza
distinction-one tensely counterpoised with e other: 'In spite of
m)'self-
In spite ofmlselfthe insidious mastery ofsong
Betrays me back .. .
Here we may prot by a comment on is poem made by D. W.
Harng in his Note an Nostalgia.*
The fact ofexperiencing the tedency towards regrersion meaas nothing.
It is e nal attitud.e towards e erpedeuce tat has to be evaluated,
. Deteniaatiow, F. R, Learis), Chatto & Wiado$ 1934,
page 7o (ed.
77

JUDGMENT AND ANLYSIS
and in terature is attitude may be suggested only very subtly by means
ofthe total cotrtext, In Tltc GreyLa atd, in Piazo the writer's attitude
is dear. Shanks obviously fnds a tranquil pleasure in the thought of
throwing up the sponge. In Lawrence's poem the imPulse seeos to haYe
beeo equally strong anil is certainly expressed more forcefully, but e
attitude is diserent. Lamence is ailulq stang e overwhehoing
strength of the iopulse but reporting resistarce to it and. iEPl/iEg that
resistance is better than yielding.
That 'heart of me', we see, is no mere sentimental banality. For
the poet his 'heart' is not his; it is an emotional rebellion at he fights
against and disowns. fIe is here, and his emotion there. Again, the
'glamour of childish days' is a 4lacing phrase; it represents a surrender
that his 'manhood' is ashamed of.
No more need be said about the elements of is kind in the poem.
It is a complex whole, and its distinction, plainly, is bound up wi
its complety, This complexity, t recpitulate, involves e presence
of someing other than directly offered emotion, or mere emotional
flow-the presence of something, a sPecific situation, concretely
grasped. The presentment of is situation involves a disinterested or
'constating' attitude, and also a critical attitude towards the emotion
evoked by the situation: here we have our licence for saying at,
however strong n emotional efect e poem has, that is essentially
conditioned by'thought': e constating, relating and critical mind
has its essential part in the work ofsensibility' W'e can say furer t{rat
te aspect of disinterested 'presentment' is not confined to the situation
seen it te end of the 'visa of years'; the collapse upon te 'flood of
remembrance' is itself, while so poignantly and inwardly conveyed,
presented at the sme time from the outside. It is a kind of object
lor contemplation, though one that isn't 'there'except in so far as
we are also inside it, We are immersed in the flood enough to feel,
as immediate e.xperience, its irresistibleness; at the same time it is as
much'out there'as the'child sitting under the piano'. And in tese
observations we are making notes at are very relevant to the theme
of impersonality'.
Complexity, we can see at once when we pss on' is not a marked
characteristic of Tennyson's poem, whi is what at the first reading
its movement seemed to indicate. It moves simply forrvard wi a
sweetly plangent flow, without eck, cross-tension or any qualifying
element. To give it e reading it asks for is to flow wi it, acquiescing
in a complete and simpte immersion: there is no attitude towards the
78
.THOUGHT' AND EMOT]ONAL OUALITY
experience except one of complaisance; we are to be wholly in it and
of it. We note, too, the complete absence of anything like the parti-
cularity of (a): there is nothing that gives the efiect of an object, or
substantial independent existence. The particularity of'the happy
Autumn-fields', 'te first beam glittering on a sail', and the casement
that lslowly ades a glimmering square', and so on, is only speciously
of the kind in question. No new definitions or directions of feeling
derive from these suggestions of imagery, which seem to be wholly a/
the current of gue emotion that determines them. We note that the
strong effect of particularity produced by (a) is conditioned by the
complexity-by the play of contrst and tension; but (J) seems to offer
a uniform emotional fluid (though there are several simple ingredients,
represented by 'sad', 'fresh', 'strange', 'sweet' and so on-the insistent
explicimess of which is significant)'
And the relation between 'thought' and 'feeling' as illustrated by
Tennyson's poem?-A note of Yeas's on his own work comes to
mind here: 'I tried after e publication of The Wanderings of Oisin
to write o nothing but emotion, and in the simplest language, and
now I have had to go through it all, cutting out or altering passages
tat are sentimental for lack ofthought.'* This has an obvious bearing
on The Lale Isle of Innisfru. Tcars, idle tears, n the main respects
dealt wi in the last paragraph, may fairly be classed wrh Innisfree.
Wheer we are to call it 'sentimental' or not, it certinly bears to
Brea, breal, breah a relation that gives force to the suggestion made
in regard to is last poem. The poet who wrote the one wrote the
oer: tley are both highly characteristic; and it is plain that habitual
indulgence of the kind represented by Tears, idle tears-indulgence
not aicompanied and virtually disowned by a critical placing-would
be, on grounds of emotional and spiritual hygiene, something to
deplore. There is nothing gross about the poem; it eibits its author's
highly personal distinction; but it unquestionably offers emotion
directly, emotion or its own sake without a justifying situation, and,
in the comparison, its inferiority to Lawrence's poem compels a
largely disparaging commentry'
he comparison is not gratuitous, a puritnic intrusion of critical
righteousness; readiness to make the kind of judgment at the
comparison enforces is implicit in any sound resPonse to Tennl'son's
poem. The grounds for this insistence could, if necesary, be demon-
strated pretty conclusively rom the case-the clinical suggestion
a
Earl! Pornt arrd toths, Page v.
79

JUDGMENT AND ANALYIS
applies-of Shelley. Shellep whose genius is not in dispute, preaches,
in the Defence of Poetry, a doctrine that makes the writing of Poetry
as much a matter of passive submission to the emotional tides, and
as little a matter of active intelligence, as possible' Consistently with
this doctrine, a representtive expression of his genius such as le
Ode to the Wut Wind depends for its success on our being so carried
along in the plangent sweep of emotion tat we ask no questions. To
te questions that propose themselves when we do stop and consider-
Can 'loose clouds' really be 'shed' on the 'stream of the wind' 'like
earth's deczying leaves'l what are the 'tangled boughs of heaven and
ocean'l and so on-there is no better reply than that tle questions
don't propose themselves when we are responding properly (as it
requires an efrort not to do). The tlinking mind is in abeyance, and
discrepancies ssume an inevitable congruence in e
flood of
plangency.
There is, then, an obvious sense in which Shelley's poetry ofrers
feeling divorced from thought-ofiers it as something opposed to
thought. Along with this characteristic goes Shelley's notable inability
to gras? anything-to present any sitution, any observed or imagined
actulity, or any experience, as an object existing independendy in its
own nature and in its own right. Correlatively there is tie direct offer
of emotion-emotion insistently explicit-in itself, for itself; for its own
sake: we find our description merging into criticism. For, reading
Shelley's poetry, his best, the finest expression of his genius, there is
demonstrable force and point in saying tlat a due acceptance will
have in close attendance on it e at anF rate imPlicit qualification:
'But these habits are dangerous,' It
is significant that examples of
gross sentimentality figure among the collected poems.* Shelley's
works, indeed, provide much more serious occasions for criticism;
t That timeis dead for ever, childl
Drowa'd, frozeo, dead for ever.
We look oa the past, and stde aghast
t the spectes waiting, pale and ghast,
Of hopes that thou ald I beguil'd
To dea oa life's dark river.
The stream we gazed oD thetr to['d by,
IB waves are uDreturing.
nd yet we staad in a loae Iaud
Iike tobs to malk the memory
Of hopes aod fears that fade and flee
h e light oflife's dim moraiag.
8o
.THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL SUALITY
criticism that is far more damaging because it goes deeper. Here we
have the reason for adducing him at this stage ofthe argument: in the
-xamination of his poetry the literary critic finds himself passing, by
inevitable transitions, from describing characteristics to making adverse
judgments about emotional qualityi and so to a kind of discussion in
which, by its proper methods and in pursuit of its proper ends, literary
criticism becomes the diagnosis ofwhat, looking for an inclusive term,
we can only call spiritual malady.
There would be no point in offering here an abridged critique of
Shelley in demonstration- To be satisfactory, the treatment must be
fairly full, and I have attemPted such a treatment in Revaluation.
But it may stll be worth insisting, by way of developing a discussion
opened above, that if one finds it a weakness in Shelley's poetry that
feeling, as ofiered in it, depends for its due effect on a virtual abeyance
of thJ thinking mind, one is not appealing, as at one time seemed so
often to be assumed, to a criterion represented by e seventeen-
century Metaphysicals'
Th possibilities are not as limited as at; te problem cannot be
reduced to that choice ofsimple alternatives which the Shelley-Donne
ntithesis suggests- And perhaps there is mote to be said about the
presence of'thought' in Metaphysical poetry an those who resot
so readily to the antithesis recognize' The obvious presence, we know,
is in the ratiocination and the use ofintellectual material (philosophical,
theological and so on). In following the argument and appreciatingthe
nature and relevance of the ideas invoked one has, reading Metaphy-
sical verse, to make something of e kind of sustained intellectual
efiort demanded by a closely reasoned prose treatise. That, of course,
isn't all: in good Metaphysical poetry e analogies that form so large
a part of the argument introduce imagery that is concretely realized
arC has powerul imaginative effects-effects that depend, though, on
our ollowing the argument.
The vices to which e Metaphysical habit inclines are antithetical
to those attendnt on tle habit represented by Shelley and the Tennyson
of Tears, idle teorc; they are a matter, not ofthe cultivation of emotion
for its own ske, but of the cultivation of subtlety of ought for its
own sake; we find ingenuities of analogy and logic (or quasi-logic)
at are uncontrolled by a total imaginative or emotional PurPose.
And in a great many successful Metaphysical poems the emotion seems
to have a secondary and ancillary status: without some fuhra of
emotional interest ttre ingenious system of tensions-the organization
8r
 .THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL QUAIITY
JUDGMENT ND ANALYSI
of 'wit'-couldn't hve been contivedi and that says pretty much all Alough his whole healt yean
ere is to say about t}le presence o emotion. But when a Poet of In passiotrate tmgedy,
Neyer was face so stem
Metaphysical habit is personally moved and posesed by something
With sweet austeritT.
profoundly experienced, as, for instance, Donne in tJ:.e Noaurnall,
en we have poetry of very exceptional emotional strength. Yanquished in fe, his death
The part of 'thought' in this strength de*erves more consideration By beauty made amends:
than it usually gets under the head of 'Metaphysical wit': there is The passing ofhis breath
more to it than subde ratiocination-e surprising play of analog;r. Won his defeated ends.
The actity of the thinking mind, the energy of intelligence, involved
in the Meaphysical habit means that, when e poet ar urgent Armour'd he rides, his bearl
personal experience to deal with it is attended to and contemplated- Sare to the stars of dooEi
which in turn means some kind of separation, or distinction, between He triuophs now, the dead,
Beholdiog Lond.ou's glooo.
er<periencer and experience. 'Their attempts were always analytic'-
to analyse your experience you must, while keeping it alive and imme- Our wearier spirit faints,
diately present as experience, treat it in some sense as an objecl That Ver'd in the world.'s emploTr
is, an essential part of the strength of good Metaphpical poetry turns His soul was of the saints;
out to be of the same order as e streng of all the most satisfying Anil art to him was joy.
poetry: e conceitedness, the Metaphysicality, is the obtrusive King trieil in fires ofwoe!
accompaniment of an esential presence of 'thought' su as we have Men hunger or thy grace:
in the best work of all great poets, It can be said in favour of the And through the aight I go,
Metaphysical habit that it favours such a presence. Loving thy moumful face.
These points may be enforced by considering in comparison with a
Yet when the city sleeps,
representtive piece of Victorian versq a passage of Marvell: '!/hea all the cries are stilln
(o) Sombre and rich, the skies, The stars anil heaveoly deeps
'7ork
Great gloons, and starry plains; out a perfect will.
Gently the night wind sighs;
Else a vast silence reigns.
The splendiil silence clings () What Fielil of aU the Civil 1Vars,
rounil ue: ancl around Where his werc not the cleepest Scarsl
The saddest ofall Kings' Ancl Hamptou shows wtrat part
Crown'<I, and again iliscrown'd. He hail of wiser rt.

Where, twining subtile fears with hope,

Alone he riiles, alone, He wove a Net of su a scope,
The air anil fatal king: That Charles himself might chase
DarL night is all his own,
To Caresbrooks uarrow case.
That otrauge and solemn thing.
'Whi are more full of fate: That thence e Royal Actor born
The stan; or those sad eyesl The Tragict Sca$olil might ailom:
'Which are more still and great: 'While
round e armed bands
T[ose brows, or the ilarl skiesl Diil clap their bioody haucls.
gz 83

JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
He nothing coamon did or mean
Upon that memorable Scene:
But with his heener Eye
The Axes edge did try:
Nor call'd the Gods with vulgar spight
To vi:rdicate his helpless Right,
But bow'd his comely Head,
Down as upon a Bed.
To orestall the possible comment at the compison is arbitrary,
it had better be said at once that Lionel Johnson's stanzas are ofered
as a foil to Marvell's. And, actually, By the tatue of King Charles at
Charing Cross may fairly be taken as rePresentative of the tradition
to which it belongs, the main nineteenth-century tradition, and it is
highly characteristic for a poet of that tradition to centre his interest
in a hero of the past and to eibit towards him Johnson's kind of
attitude. On e other hand, we can say of Marvell that, had he chosen
to deal with a figure from the past, he would have treated him as a
contemporary, and that it is highly characteristic of Marvell to
express so sympathetic an attitude towrds charles in a poem ofwhich
Cromwell is the ofi.cial hero.
It must be plain at once that such impressiveness as Johnson's
poem has is conditioned by an absence ofthought. This is poetry
the 'soul', that nineteenth-century region of specialized poetical
experience where nothing has sharp definition and where effects of
'proundity' and 'intensity' depend upon a lulling of the mind. The
large evocztiveness begins in the rst stanza, so that we needn't press
the question whether 'clings' in the second-
The splendid silence cngs
Around me
-is the right word: we know that if we have lapsed properly into the
kind of reading the poem claims such questions don't arise, and that,
absorbed in the sombre richness, the great glooms, and so on, we
merge wiout any question at all into the sadness of 'the saddest of
all kings'. If we are in a mood to ask questions' the pocess by which
all is evocation is made to invest the'fair and fatal king' hasn't the
needful potency, and reading
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing,
84
,THOUGHT' AND EMOTiONAL gUALITY
we may perhaps comment adverselv on the conditions of vague
i-presu*"r, in th. poe- and alcoholic lack of locus in the reader
that make 'thing' an impressive rime. How complete an abeyance of
the questioning mind is called for becomes still more obvious when
the poem itself asks ormal questions:
Which re morc fu[ of fate:
The stars; or those sad eYesi
W'hich are more still and great:
Those brows, or the dark shiesl
Taken as real questions, requiring answers, they are merely ludi-
crous. Again, the essential absence of thought-the absence that. is
essential e emotional effect-is aPParent when (as the right reader
doesn't) we try to relate what look like key statements, focusing the
significance of the poem. We are told that
ThePassing of his breath
Won his defeated ends
and then, in the next stanza but one, that
He triumPhs now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom
of
from -nothing more at all seizable is conveyed regarding the nature
his triuph except that he became a legend and a symbol adapted
to the purposes of the Lionel Johnsons' And here, of course, we
mak" or. iritical point: it is his own purpose that Johnson is really
concerned with, not Charles, who is merely an excuse' a cover and
opportunity. We may note in Marvell's
He noing common d or mean
an apt implicit comment on e suggested royal triumph of saintly
Schidenfriude that gratifies Johnson, but we know that criticism
needn'ibother itself with a solemn comparison ofJohnson's attitude
towards Charles with Marvell's. There is no Clwrles there in
Johnson, who is not preoccupied with anything in the
nature of an
bject felt or imagined as existing in its own right.
Our wearier sPirit fains,
Vex'd in the world's emPloY:
His soul was ofthe saints;
And art to him was joY.
85

JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
King, trieil in fres ofwoe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through tle night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.
-It is plain tiat the hunger comes first, the appetite for a certain
kind of religiose-emotional indulgence, and that Johnson goes straight
for is, uninhibited by any thought of reality-or any thought at all;
and that what he loves is his love, his favourite vague and warm
emotions and sentiments, which Charles (e thinking and judging
mind being in a happy drunken daze) can be taken as justifying.
The curious show ofthought and logic necessary to Johnson's purpose
is well illustrated in the final stanza, with its opening 'Yet'. We
can say easily enough what at stanza does, but we cannot say what
it means.
fttakes no great critical acumen to see all this. The poem is
ofiered for e obviousness of its illustrative significance. It shows in
their esential relations vague evocativenes, the absence of anything
grxped and presented, the absence of imagery tat will bear any
closer attention than that grven by the rapt and passive mind in its
gliding pasage, e absence of mnstating and relating thought, e
direct aim at emotion in itself, the grossness of sentimentality. We
do not, of course, argue rom e poem to Lionel Johnson's personal
qualities. It merely shows what an unfortunate tradition can do with
a cultivated mind.
Tradition served Marvell very difierently. Though the Horatian
O/e is not one of his Metaphysical poems, the Metaphysical element
perceptible in it goes so perfecdy wi e actual Horatian mode as
to reinforce very neatly a point made above-the point that conceited-
ness and e other distinctively Meaphysical qualities are' in good
Metaphysical poeuy, obtrusive manifestations of an esential presence
of 'thought' such as we have in some non-Metaphpical poetry, The
contemplating, relating and appraising mind is unmistakably there in
dre characteristic urbane poise of the ode. There could hardly have
been a directer or more obviously disinterested concem with objects
of contemplation: the attitudes seem to be wholly determined by the
nature of what is seen and judged, and the expression of feeling to be
secondary and merely incidental to just statement and presentment.
These qualities, which are exemplified on so impressive a scale and in
so developed a way in the ode as a whole-in the cool, appraising poise
86
.THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL SUALITY
of the eulogy of Cromwell, the delicately ironic survey of contempo-
rrry hirtori, the grave aplomb of the ciose, and in the very fact of
Charles's appearing to such advanuge in such a context-ar aPPaTr,rt
ot Charles as it stands by itself' And it is plain
enoush in ih" p"t "feeling
"g" and attitude, its unassertive command of
that s streng us
our sympathy, dePends on them.
It'mry t wel to repeat tlat there is no question here ofsolemn
appraisal of the two poems-or of-weighing Johnson's
"ornproiiu"
po" arvell's fragment. The point of the.juxtaposition is
"grirrt
that it'gives us an illustrative contrast of modes. An antitlesis so
so-aorr" may comment, as to leave e bearing of- the
"*t."-",
comparison in doubt: ii is in the nature of Marvell's ode not to be a
product of strong personal emotion (there is no evidence in it that
i\{arvell hacl any"to control), but to b; the poised formal expression of
statesmanlike wisdom, surveying judicially the contemPorary scene'
That is so; nevertheless, no one will contend that feeling has no part
in the effect, Much as the ode seems to be a matter of explicit state-
ment, its judgments are conveyed concretely, in terms of feeling and
attitude. in fact, if it were question of choosing e more potent
piece of propaganda or the 'ait and atal king', the more deeply
mouing evo"tn, tympathetic and sympathy-winning, woyl-d1t eygn
the deiotee do well'to prefer Marvell's linesl And it should be plain
that qualities o essentially the same order as those which justify us
in taing of e presencj in the Horatian Ode of the contemplating,
relating nd upptiring mind can co-exist with the evidence, in tone
and feing, oi-gr"rt"i personal urgency-a presence that needn't be
at the sam time, as it is in the ode, one of very deflnite and conscious
tradition in the attitudes and valuations. Indeed, it would be possible
to rrange poems in series in such a way as to make the classification
of the Ode, Praud. Maisie an ,! Slunber did ny spirit seal
lor)tian
together, as against the contrasting poems of Lionel Johnson, Tenny-
son and Shelley, obviously reasonable.
Bv wav of exoloring these matters further let us now consider
bri"y a ioem in wnicih Stretley makes what lools like an insistent
ofier of thought:
Music, when soft voices e,
Vibrates in the memorT-
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live wthin the sense they quicken.
87
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS 'THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL pUALITY
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed; Loye itself shall slumber on
And so y tloughts, when thou art gotre,
-inyolves something more than a clean one-way passage from mere
Love itself shall slumbe! on,
things to mere 'thoughts', and is a completing of ttre process of
legerdemain (for the working of the poem depends on something
The poem has an effect ofsharp insistent logic. A series ofostensibly
parallel propositions leads up to the'And so'ofthe inevitable.'sounding
closely analogous to optica.l illusion-'the quickness of the hand
deceives e eye'). We have in 'thy thoughts' the clinching equivo-
conclusion. It is characteristic of the poem that we take the effect
cation: 'y thoughts' are ostensibly the petals that remain .when
withoutasking wheer this'And so'clinches an analogy or a syllogism.
thou art gone'r and is implication of persistence evokes (while we
When we do set ourselves resolutely to reading with full and sustained
are reading currendy) the ghost ofa significant force because, witJrout
critical attention we find at the efiect combines the suggestion of
telling ourselves so, or distinguishing between the two senses, we take
both, and is able to do so only because it is neither, except speciously,
by a sleight at depends upon an abeyance of te demand or logic.
'thy thoughts' as being at the same time 'thoughts of thee'.
What kind of status the bed has that 'Love itself' 'slumbers on'
Music, whea soft voices die, there would be no profit in inquiring or what kind of being .Love
Vibrates in the aemory itself is or has. The proposition has a metaphysical air, but, clearly,
anysignificance it may claim is merely a ghost. The difference between
-at seems merely to state e simple fact that we remember music this kind of efrect, which depends on an absence of attention and a
when it has ceased. The second couplet- relaxing of the mind, and, say, Marvell's Defnition of Lozte, which
demands a sustained intellectual effort in the following-through and
Odours, when sweet violets sicken, following-up of the thought, needn't be laboured. Exploration may
Live within e sense they qucken be more profitably pursued through another kind of contrast, thal
provided by this aracteristic poem of Blake's:
-seems merely to translate dre proposition of the first into terms of
the sense of smell; though we note that the 'live', developed by the O Rose, thou art sicL!
equivocal 'quicken' ('make lively'-'impart life to'), reinorces e The invisible wora,
potential equivoction of 'vibrates'.* But when we consider the ird That flies iu the night,
couPlet- In e howog storm,
Has found out y bed
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Of crimson joy;
Are heay'd for the beloved's beil And his dark sectet love
Does th)' fe destroY.
-we find that it only by a kind of blufr at it has the efect ofbeing
is
another equivalent proposition. The implicit asimilation of the 'rose It (or used to be) a commonplace of acdemic literary commentary
is

leaves' to the status of remembered sounds nd scnts throws back
on tese (already by suggestion something more than memories) a
material reality, or, rathe, produces in us a vague sense of a status
that combines material reality with non-material persistence: so here
they are, the petals, physically impresible by the 'beloved', and yet
the clinching effect of e final couplet-
. Cf. the opeaing of Sznt Nortorr.
88
at Blake and Shelley are related by peculiar affinities; but what most
strikes tle reader whose attention is upon e poetry they wrote is
eir extreme unlikeness. In Blake's best verse tlere is someing
corresponding to te 'wiry bounding line' he demanded of visual an.
It is not merely that he is strong on the visual side-a truth that lends
iself to a rnisleading overstress. f we are to associate his essential
sength with e 'thing seen' it must be in e full consciousness
that the phrase here has more than its literal sense. The esential
89
 .THOUGHT' AND EMOTIONAL BUALITY
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSI
But most rough midnight sheets I hear
obiects in its preoccupation with which his poetry.exhibits. s"* ntititl
How the Youthful harlot's cune
ifirrt"rest-such disinterestednes-are not susceptible of visualization; Blasts e new-born infant's tear,
ev belons to inner experience' emotional and instinctive life' e ril blights with plagues the aarriage hearse,
in r'"r lif. oithe psych.. Ii it Bl"k 's g"nius that, dealing with material
that coul.l be prsent to him only as the most intimate personal is ttre naked vision;
.*oerience-e very substance ofhis appetites, desires, inner urgencies'
analogous Love seekettr onlY self to Please,
fers and temptations-he can write poetry that has virtues
of To bird another to its delight'
io tt o." of ih" 'rvi.y bounding line'. Its intensity is- ngt-one-
emotional insistence; ihere is none of the Shellepn 'I eel, I sufer'
Joys in another's loss of ease,
nd builds a HeI1 in Heaven's despite,
I vearn'r ere is no atmosphere of feeling and no I'
'Ir, hi, or, Bl^ke (one ofhis finest) Eliot, discussing the'peculiar Tle Mertiage of Heaoet and Hell is traked
is the naked observati orli arrd'
phiJosophy, presented. But Blake's occasional marriages of poetry aoil
honestv' or 'unplers"n.ss') of Blake's poetry, says*: 'none of tIe
"rrro
philosophy ae not so fecitous.
it i"*'*iri"ttexemplifu e sickness of an epoch or a fashion has
this"quality; only os things which, by some extraordinary.labour Bv 'direct statement' I
mean the kind of thing that Eliot calls 'the
of simplifition,'exhibit the essential sickness or strength of e
human
nked observation', and it should be plain that there can be cases where
soul.' Again: '?e Songs of Innacence and af Experience, and the poems the'obsenztion' is pretty manifestly Present in the'naked vision''
i.o* Jno"",ti -unisciipt, at" the poems of a man witlt a profound The Sick Rose is surelY such a case.
interest in human emotions, and a profound knowledge of tlrem'
The
I The aspect of 'visin', of course, is tle more obvious'- We hesitate
emodons are presented in an extremely simptified, abstract form''
to call the Rose a symbol, because 'symbol' is apt to-imply something
ouote these remarks bv way of enforcing e point that what distin-
verv difierent fronr- the immediacy with which Blake sees, feels and
juishes Blake's poe,ty itotn'Sh.ll"y" rnay fairly be said to be a Presence
stas in terms of his image-the inevitableness with which e Rose
f'thousht'. Tire teing' elements ofour inner experience as clearly presents itself to him as the focus of his 'observation'' We have here
"frn"d bi."t inuolves, f itself, something we nturallyall'ought'' a radical habit of Blake's; a habit on which the remark made above
Ancl it wiil be noted by the way how inevitably we slip.into e visual regarding objectivity and the ing seen has obvious bearings-and a
anlosv. the tl'pe and model ofobjectivity being the thing seen (there t rtit, it"-igrt t" uded, that shows the strength it was to Blake as -a
Uiingt ete on " visualist fallacy in criticism)i and, further' ooet io be lso a visual artist. Yet, ater all, how much of Blake's
"r"
tat thereis the signicznt linguistic by wh! to tee' is to
il.ose do we cover with 'visual' and 'ing seen'? The vocative
usage
understand seel'i. In any case, e 'extraordinary labour of simpli-
'I establishes e Rose 'out there' before us, so that it belongs to e
fication'behind Blaie's besi ings is a labour ofanalysis-anallsis at orcler of visible things ancl we don't question that we see it; but does
he can present in direct sbtemeni, as well as implicidy in the
resulting
its visual presence amount to much more an atl
;simplified form" Again it is convenient to resot to Eliot's esay (I
'Crimson', of course, makes an undoubted visual impact, but of
question, in the following tle second sentence)f:
the total woik that it does, in its context, that visual impact is only
one element. What'crimson' does is to heighten and complete e clash
His philosophy, like his sions, ke his insight, ke, his technique' was
of asociation set up by the 6rst line:
hi" owr. And u.cotdingly he was incneil to attach more imPoltance
to it than an artist shoJdi this s what Eakes hin eccentliq aod Eakg
O Rose, thou art sick'
him iadineil to formlessness.
To call a rose 'sick' is to make it at once something more than a
o Sleated Esrayt. D Ee ?p3.
in Ililan Blac' E*Es
ing seen. 'Rose' as developed by 'thy bed of crimson joy' evokes
t -. "*,.ii.itifiiie one's Valuatioo of Blake'
.s..
rich"pasion, sensuality once gio-ing, delicate and fragrant' and
n t iiit s;" 6r"b*t {qts. Eted bv Moxtoa D' Palev atrd Michael Pbillip' "t
90
9t

JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
exquisite helth. 'Bed of crimson joy' is voluptuously tactul in
suggestion, and,in ways we needn't try to anallse, more than actual
-we feel ourselves 'bedding down'in the Rose, and tlere is also a
suggestion of secret heart ('found out'), the focus oflife, down therc
at e core of tie closely clustered and enclosing petals.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the uight,
In the howog storo,
offering its shock o contrst to the warm security of love ('She's-ail
Sates, and all Princes, I, Nothing else is'), conveys the ungovernable
otherness of the dark forces of the psyche when they manifest them-
selves as disharmonics. The poem, we can see' registers a profound
observation ofa kind we may find developed in many places in D. H.
Lawrence-an observation regarding e posessive and destructive
element ere may be in 'love"
There is, then, much more solid ground for attributing 'ought' to
is wholly non-ratiocinative and apparently slight poem than to that
ostensiblyiyllogistic, metaphysical piece of Shel's. And e presence
of 'oughi' goes wi e focused and pregnant strength, the con-
centratio; ofiignificant feeling, that makes e poem so unlike the
characteristic Sliellelzn lyric. Blake, of course, didn't confine himself
to such pregnant brwtiqas The ic Rose; he aspired to give developed
and extendd e:cpression to his 'profound interest in human emotions'
and his 'profound knowledge ofem'. I am thinking ofhis long poems.
Of e ng poems Eliot sap that their weakness 'is certainly not at
thev are t visionary, too iemote rom the world. It is that Blake did
nosee enough, beca'me too much occupied with ideas.' However tlnt
may be, it isinough to say herc at their weaknes as poetry is their
weaknes as tought.*
That such stieng as is represented by The itt Rara isn't
necessarily a matter of e nspired instantan, the lyrical flash,.but
caz be represented in a systematic explora.tion of experience, Eliot's
own poetry very strikingly testifies. I am tinking above all of the
Four Q*artds. Though the procedure is not one of logical discourse,
e hur behind theie is as much a labour of thought as the labour
is tlat goes to a philosophical treatise, but they can only be understood
if theiiutterlyunproselike chracter is recognized. This unproselike
character means e reverse of a relaxed discipline o ought. On e
t I dbcuss Blke' problem ia my essay'
92
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
contrarp here, in this poetry of Eliot's, intensely poetic as it is and
related to what is strong in other poetry, we have an admirably
demonstrative enforcement of e point that the discipline capable of
justiSing formal literary study is a discipline of intelligence, and one
that no one who is committed to using language for disciplined thought
can afiord to forgo. Disatisfaction witi e relations of thought to
experience that are imposed by current linguistic usage-by the
conceptual currency as it is ordinarily taken ove into poetry-forms
an explicit corollary ofthe positive aim,
(, r)
IMAGERY ND MOYEMENT
'Image' and 'imzgery'are insidious terms; they have prompted an
immense deal of nai've commentary on (for instance) Shakespeare's
verse, and, in general, have encouraged confident reliance on two
closely related fallacies: (i) the too ready assumption that images are
visual, and (ii) the conception of metaphor as essentially simile with
the 'like' or 'as' left out. The notion is that ttre poet nds an image
at represents his idea, and at the aPtness with which it does so
is a matter of illustrative correspondence or parallel, pictorial effects
being more vivid than ideas. Even when you have Pointed out that
tere may be imagery that engages any of the senses poet may
appeal to, an assumption tends to persist inertly that the effect of the
non-visual image will be the equivalent of seeing a little picture'
Perhaps when it comes to tactual effects the assumption doesn't
persist so readily-but tactual effecs, I thint, are not universally, or
even generally, recognized as coming under'imagery'i nor are
analogical evocations of difrerent kinds of effort and moYement. Yet
it would be arbitrary to draw a line anywhere betweea these and what
would be recognized immediately as images.
It will be well to turn at once to an example ofwhat can be done
creatively with the English language by Shakespeare. I discovered the
exemplary use of the following passage years ago when, having said
at in major poetry what is in form a simile sometimes turns out not
to be really a simile at all, I ought of
Anil pity, likea naleil new-born babe,
triding the blast . . .
93

JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
Setting out to enforce tle point, I remarked that a naked
new-bom
o passage in whi Macbe, having declared that, if he could be
ri" i"iJ*e " trast was a disconceningty odd personification by the
Piw. but fnd, when I started to explain ttre Part Played
oseldo-simile-or more-than-simile-in the strange Power ot -re
ior,,* ,o which it belonged, that I was committed to e anal)'srs
;,h;;;" G' Ttt" ,i"""tt, ut"leth's, opens scene vii of Act I:
If it were done, when'tis done, then't were well
It were done quiclly: if e assassinatiol
Coulcl traram up the consequence, and catch
Wi his surcease success; ttrat but this blow
Mieht be the be-all and ttre end-all here,
But"here, upon is bank antl shoal of tioe,
I9e'd jump e Iife to come.-But in these cases'
We sti[ ve judgnent herq that we but tea
Bloodv instructions, which, being taught' retum
To oeue th' inventor: is even-handeil justice
Co'i-nds th' ingredimts ofour poisou'd chalice
To our owa ps. He's here in double trust:
Firsq as I anr his kinsman anil his subject,
Strong both agaitrst the deed; then, as his host,
Whoihould apinst his murderer shut e door'
Not bear e knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hat[ borne his faculties so meel hath been
So clear in his great o6ce, that his virtues
Will plead kegeh, tru!0Pet-tongued, agaimt
The eeP damnation of his uking-o$;
And pitv-' [e a nateil new-bom babe,
Stridin ue btast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upou ihe sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow e horrid deed in every eye'
That tears shall down the wiad'-I have no spur
To prick e sides of Ey intent, but only
Vauiting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And. falls on e oer side.*
This is superb drmatic Poetryi it creates-for us $l mmplex.state
that.Lady
r.*it"i i""ir, the tragic *"k"to of self-knowledge'
"r
;;;;;g rt e clse of e speech, PreciPitates int? ,rurderous
resolution. Both e recoil and e desperate Plunge needed to over-
r I 'Ie ith Hearv Cuadnghaa hea I tad in the notes to my. Arden'
M";;;."+;;;i. r" *^'-*u" doubt at shalespeare qr''side" sld
that it ought to coarc iato the texC'
9+
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
come it are evoked in the first line and a half. There follows the
asrur of finality in this worl{ he wouldn't give a damn for the
supernatural consequences, betrays that ey are what tell most
poiently in his intense imaginative recoil. Not that he doesnt imagrne
iith appalled vividness th; Judgment here'. That is made unmistak-
able by e clear incredulity o the 'if':
if the assassination
Coulil nammel up the consequence, and catch
-With
his surcease succe$ . . .
The incredulity is conveyed in e vigour of e imaginative
realization: the asasination can't conceivably trammel up the conse-
quence, and the imposibility is expressed in the mocking sense.of an
instantarr"ous magii that tuins the king's 'surcease' into assured finl
'succes'. No onJwould call this kind f more-than-stated 'as if' (an
efect much used by Hopkins) an 'image', but, in its evocative imme'
diacy of presentment, it replaces mere prose statement or description
*it .o.r.r.ten s intimatelv related to at of 'trammel up e
"
consequence', which anyone'would describe as metaphor' The
state;ent that follows, 'He's here in double trust' etc', makes plain
to us tht the energy wi which te Judgment here'is imagined
itself conveys MacUtnt own horror of e crntemPlated crime, e
peculiar henousness of which would, he can't question, bring.on him
ihe inescapable consequences inherent in superntural sanctions for
e impious fool who efies em. Then comes the 'simile', in a total
context at makes it something very fferent from what that word
suggests-someing very much more complex:
Beside"s, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great ofice, that his virtues
Wi plead ke angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The d.eep damnation of bis taking-of;
Anil pity, IiLe a nakeil new-born babe,
String e blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd
Upon the sightless couriers of e air,
Sball blow the horrid deed in every eye'
That tears shall drowa the wiad.
Pitv, indeed, has its esential part in the comprehensive effect, but
'pity"imagined as a naked newborn babe is not the actor that the
95
 IMGERY AND MOVEMENT
JUDGMENT AND ANLYSIS
to make it. We are compelled to r-ealize shall prevail-'quicLly'i that Macbeth shall commit himself to e
'simile', isolated, would seem
desperate act. She pulls the trigger, and e bolt flies.
that by the irnmediate development implicit in 'striding ttre blast"
whi merges at once into if we say that thi complex tension has had its analysis in Macbe's
speech, that isto recogniie that Shakespeare's poetry is ttre agent and
heaven's cherubin, hors'd vehicle of thought. That Shakespeare so obviously can't have first
Upon the sightless couriers of dre air, stated his ought explicitly, 'clearly' and 'logically' in prose, and then
the turned it into ramatic poetry doesn't make it any the les ought.
and we don't question that the emphasis in Macbeth's recoil from I recall what I once heard a professor of music say to a very young
deecl he nevertireless still contemPltes is on the certainty ofconsequent
genius he had been testing: 'You must find e rest of us awfully slow"
disaster-disaster the more horriiying because it is the spiritual aspect hrk"rp"rr" was a genius, and genius in him was marvellously quick
of such Judgment here'that will i.uv made worldly success imposible'
and penetrating intelligence about life and human nature. The quick-
This"sigiificant intentness on the deed he recoils from-the ,r"ss wr. for the apprehending and registering ofsubtleties and
p".u"r." .""1"ont."diction at makes Macbeth's inner state a tragic "o"ol
complexities, and the English language in 160o was an ideal meum
iheme-is wonderfully exposed to us in e spech,.the total dramatic for the Shakespearian proceses of thought. Born into Drfen's age,
utterance. We see significance of e opening line and a half: when 'logic' and 'clarity' had triumphed, Shakespeare couldn't have
't were well been Shakespeare, and e modern world would have been without
Ifit were done, when 'tis doue, then
were done quicklY . . the proofthit thought ofhis kind was possible. We should have lacked
It ' convincing evidence with which to enforce the judgment that neier
It must be done quickly, as an act of unreflective desperation, or not Racine nJr Stendhal represents the greatest kind of creative writer
at all; what follows h us, in Macbeth's vivid self-exposure, why' (I am assuming at Balzac is clearly not discusible as gret in any
The closing sentence of the speech gives us, compellingly, the para- way).
doxical complety of his relation to his insistent purpose: fhe point to be stresed is that, whatever was gined by e triumph
of'clarity', Iogic and Descartes, the gain was paid for by an immeas'
I have no sPur
urable lss: you on't, without basic reservations, subscribe to the
To prick the intent, but only
sides of my
asumptions implicit in 'clear' and 'logical' as criteria without cutting
Yauiting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
e other side. your.lfofi fro* *ost important cspacities and potentialities ofthought
Ard falls on
which of its nature is essentially heuristic and creative.
He feels his 'intent' as something external to himself, a horse on The tragic significance of Maebah as human testimonp the
which he finds himself mounted, but not as a purposeful rider whose pregnancy o1the work as thought, depends on a total concePtion and
*iU .pr,. it on. And then-a non-logical -continuation of the n rg"nir"tion that correspond to-at wouldn't have been posible
".r,
sentence d;at nevertheless
have
afiects us as cogent and inevitable-we apart fiom-ttre Shakespearian use ofthe English language exemplifi.ed
the shift of imagery; logically non-sequential, but unquestionably,right in that speech of Macbeth, our examination of which started from the
as compl"ting te ramticaily relevant PercePtion and-thought'
What words 'image' and 'imagery', That use, of coursg rlas Shakespearian
is deveioped"is not merely his sense of the danqer-inherent in being -it was distinctively Shakspeare's, but he couldn't have developed it
'mounte', but the equivcal perversity of his relation to the nger: in the later phase ofthe language when (to adopt a Johnsonian formu-
the closin[ imagery.r,u"y. to us that he still entertains the ambition lation) 'English grammar' and cortectness had become firmly estab-
thut *or '"ru'C itim up iowards the saddle, though at the same time lished. Johnson remarls in the Preface:'The stile of Shakespeare
he feels the efiort required as appallingly dangerous, since, once was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed and obscure.' How much more
released, it can't be controlled. It is the woman's Part to ensur
that than grammar is involved, and that e passage is not to be read as
nusculine ambition, self-destructive in the way the speech has revealed, merely critical censure from a period point of view, could even if

96 97
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSI
there were not so mu ch else in the Prefaee that is relevant, be divined
from what Johnson says about Hanmer:
He is solicitous to reduce to Sramloar what he could uot be sure that
his auour iltened to be grammatical. Shakespeare regarded more the
series of ideas ttran of words; aod his language, not being designed for
the reader's dest, was a1l that he desired it to be if it conveyeil his
meaniag to ttre auilience.
It is illuminating to see how Johnson transcends te 'positive culture'*
of his age, and t the same time shows himself in its power. No one
who reads e passage as it comes in the Preface will question that
'not being designed or the reader's desk' implies a bias towards e
Augusariasuptions about e nture of literary excellence-and e
way in whi it ought to be aieve and that Johnson noting. how
Shkespeare subordinated 'correctness' of expression to e 'series- of
ideas' wasn't unequivocally appreciating e advntages e reckless
Shakespearian genius, favoured by e cultural condons of 1600,
enjoyed in reliion to obligatory 'corectness' of observance in logic,
grammar and decorum.
" There is ttre magnificent (and aracteristic) sentence in whi
Johnson describes more Particularly Shakespeare's way with e
Engli language-ttrat is, with subdeties of ought:
It is incident to him to be now and en entangled with an unwieldy
sentimenq which he cannot well erpress, ald will not reject; he struggles
wi it a while, and if it continues stubbom, comprises it iu words such
as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled aad evolved by minds at
have more leisure to bestow upol it
There are, of murse, unsatisfctory passages in dre received to<t of
Shakespeare at might be adduced as justifying e adverse critical
implication conveyed in tis description. But it is very far from
po;ible to be confident tat Johnson, wiout discriminating, worldn't
irave included along witl them some of e finest triumphs of Shake-
spearian creative audacity. He clearly intends the phrase, 'comprises
. 'But ao positive was the cultue of that age, at fo1 laay yels tn3 ab$t
rriters verc itill aatuelly in sympat vith it; aad it crushed a uumber ofsmaller
eea vho felt diferetrtly but did not dare to face the fact Ed rrbo poured the
aer wiae-alwaya iu, lut sometimes of good flavour-iuto the old botdes"
T. S. Eliot, ntrod.rctory ssay a Londa: .4 Poem and Te Yaxitl of H*naa
Yishet.
98
IMGERY ND MOVEMENT
it in words such as occur', as someing of a censure. How litde e
gre3t representative of polite letters would have applied it to wok
in e spirit of poetic composition he thought proper comes out in
his remark that Shakespeare 'seems to write without any moral
purpose'. About e kind of censure he intends by at Johnson is
explicit: 'This fault e barbarity of his age cannot excuse.'
The critic seems to see no relation between Shakespeare's unamed
licentiousness in the use ofthe English language and the maniestation
of creative genius registered with characteristic Johnsonian vigour
here:
Shakespeare, whether fe or uature be his subject, shows plainly that
he has seen wi his owu eyes; he ghrcs e image which he receives,
uot weaLened or distorted by the intervention of aoy oer mind; the
iguorant feel his rcpresentatiors to be just aad the leamed see that they
are compleat.
But the virtue that Johnson praises involves more an he ecognizs
-much more an his thought, conditioned by Augustan 'correctness',
is capable of grasping unequivocally. The sentence is the more signi-
ficant in that Johnson's a-ssumption regarding our contact with the
external world is explicit in it: 'e image which he receives" This is
the Lockean account of perception as a matter of pasively received
'impresions'-and it entails the whole conception that Blake was to
fight against in defence of human creativity, t}te enemy being the
cultural eros he associated with the names of Locke and Newton.
For 'correctnes' is not a mere matter of expression and presenta-
tion. The Shakespearian virtue dtat Johnson extols was not compatible
with the stylistic discipline-the linguistic habit-imposed by e great
cultural change at had taken place, irrevenibln by e end of the
seventeenth centuy. The 'cnrrecmess' endorsed by Johnson amounted
to the assumption tlat tle map was e reality. It insisted at nothing
matteed, or could be brought into intelligent discourse, dtat couldn't
be rendered as explicit, clear, logical and grammatical satement. The
'rules'were authoriutive and the writer pondered his nateril-his
'ideas'-reduced them to clarity and order, found by the light of
'jwdgment les mottTzster to put them in, and asembled tese according
to the rules oflogic and gramurar, and, ifhe was a poet, ofversification.
There was also decorum, and decorum, rtre cn see, merged into
morality as Johnson conceived this: Shakespeare, he complains,
'seems to write wiout any moral purpose'-'moral purpose', he
99

JUDGMENT AND NALYSIS
makes plain, is a resolution to enforce imaginatively-(but deliberately)
ir," siuen work a moral code that has conventional sanctions as
socially"necesary and obviously valid and authoritative' He is explicit
to that effect:
From his writings indeeil a system ofsocial duty may be selected, for
he that ioks reaionably mut tbink morallyi but his precepts and
axioos drop casually from him; he orakes no just disnibution ofgood or
eI, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobatioa of e
,oicLa; l" "urii". hi* persons iodiferendy rough right ancl wrong,
alril at the close dismisses ttrem without furer care and leaves eir
eramPles to oPerate bY chance'
Reason as invoked in 'reasonably' is mmmon-sense reason, and
'social' has already very much the force it has for Andreski' 'Correct-
nes', at is, exciudesthe essentil humn responsibility d"-fi1:d- l{
vindcated in The ecret thmer- Such responsibility is the individual
being's in a sense at Johnson can't recognize-at any rate, in explicit
thohtr for the insistence on explicitness, clarity and logic charac-
t"rir. f th" 'positive culture' he represents virtually excluded rom
formulated ought and recognizable thinking the basic truth.I have
tried to make iipossible for myself to reer to unambiguously with
the phrase 'life and lives'*-the iru that one finds oneself, or ought
to fincl onesel confronting in full recognition when contemplating
the nature of language. Sha-kespeare's power, extolled by Johuson, of
itself
'showing plainly ih"I h" hr. sien with his own eyes' manifests
in a gret'deal mor" th.n the vividnes and energy at Johnson has
in minrl. It is a power of bringing into thought z range of subtleties
and profundities central to huan experience that were excluded by
the ugustan ethos of the eighteenth century' Shakespeare.compels
one to iecogrrire that languagi is essentially heuristici that in major
crotiu" *riters it does unprecedettted tings, advances e fro-ntiers
of .h" k rorun, ancl discoveis the new. Blake had good reason for his
life-lone battle aqainst Locke and Newton.
I spJke of the"great seventeentl-century cha1q9 a1 irr-eversible; it
clearlv was. Thaoesn't of course mean that Blake's life of protest
and positive demonstration on behalf of human creativity was a final
chapLr. Art and creative literature had actually a-great future before
ei and it is imPortnt that e student should be intelligent about
how, and with what signicance, literary creativity-it is that which
' See Pages 4z-44'
roo
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
is my concern-reasserted itself after the rst prolonged consequence
ofthe newly achieved civilization: 'The sound is orc'd, the notes are
few'. The 'Romantic' eflorescence had taken place beore Blake died
(1827) and-what it most concerns my eme to emphasize-ere
ws to come the incomparable achievement in e novel, with the
line running from Blake (as I have argued elsewhere) through
Dickens to D. H, Lawrence. What it is in place to insist on is not the
technology necessary to industrialism (to which we have surely to
tl:ink of mankind as irreversibly committed), but the continuing pot-
ency of 'Ne/ton and Locke'-or Urizen-in the habits of asumption
on which tought, bo philosophic and common-sense, as well as
journalistic non-tlought (or plausible fluency) is based.
The represive 'normality' of eighteenth-century civilisation pro-
voked rebellion, in the form of corrective insistence on human
creativity and the evil produced by thwarting it. But the accelerating
development of the new civilization has gone on unbroken through
the nineteen-century to our own dayi art-I iflclude, in Blake's way'
literature under t}at head-has had, ough still enjoying among the
still influential educated public of the Victorian age prestige and wide
attentionr no decisive influence on e climate of intellectual asump-
tion. This important and clear enough truth I have already, in these
pages. illustrated from Andreski. Elsewhere I made what seems to me
the appropriate point about our own time when I remarked that
'philosophers are always weak on language'.* That I regard Polanyi
s portentously an exception I have, I hope, made plain; but his being
so much an exception has meant that he hasn't influenced the thinkers
who are influential in the climate that formed Andreski.
There is today a cult of Wittgenstein, and my attention has been
more an once called to e idea that seminars on his later philosophy
should be arranged for students ofEnglish. He is an enemy oflinguistic
'science' whose philosophy is called 'linguistic': here we have what
prompted the suggestion, and still prompts it. But the conception of
language implicit in that 'linguistic' is of no interest at all to e
intelligent student of English-no interest and no use. The fact that
opponents of linguisticianry suppose oerwise illustrates how potently
the intellectual habit established by the great seventeenth-century
ange remains unreversed. Science and technology will go on advanc-
ing; but, uncontrolled by ought and purpose of kinds they don't
. Mrrros o Witgenrtein (Te Hunan World, No. ro, page 78),
tor
 IMAGXRY AND MOVEMENT
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
encourage, they can lead only to hunan disaster-in e nature of that'e swan's down-feaer'gave us an image ofweight-or lightnes
things irieversiLle. The urgenily needed change in the-inherited habit (lack of weight) -but I have already made e offer of su a comment
of aiumption-and it will be rvolutionary-will hardly be promoted absurd. For it is plain ttrat e efiective 'as if' value depends on our
by expositions of Wittgenstein (unless these precipitate a'No!'). simultaneous sense of e massive swell of e tidal water, and at t}e
' in my
is exemplified by the editor's footnote, efiect ofboth depends on our being made by e word'swell'to eel
The inherited habii
old Arden ,!nton1 and Chl?atra, to e following pasage (Act III e 'full of tide' as a swell of emotion in ourselves. There is in fact a
Sc. ii)-for obvious reasons I quote more an tle footnote immediately complex play of diverse and shifting analogy such as one might-for
points to: ther is no dividing line-find oneself scusing under the head of
'imagery', 'imagery' conceived as that which makes the diference
,!dmy. The Apl's in her eyes: it is love's spring,
betwien mere discursive thought and what we require of art. But
And ese e showers to bring it on. Be cheerful.
Ouatiz. Sh,look w to my husband's house; aod- we find ourselves, \ itlout any sense of a break, obsewing that
Qaeur. What' movement plays an essential Part in e analogical potency of the
Octavial passage, and we could hardly be altogeer happy in bringing that
Oxaztia, 1' tellyou in Youl ear. undei 'imagery'. This part played by movement iists on our noticing
ltttory.Het tong:oe will not obey het heart, oor ca!l- it in the opening of the speech, and in the closing dause:
Hei heart inform her tongue-the swan's down-feather, He! totrgue will not obey her heart, aor can
That stands uPon te swell at full of tide, Her heart inform her tougue . . .
Aud neither way inclines.
and, after the self-contained 'standing' poise ofthe penultimate line, the
The rden footnote, which regards Antony's last utterance, runs: lapse into
It is not dear wheer Octavia's heart is t}re swaa's down-feather, nd neier way inclines.
swayed neie way on the full tide of emotion at parting wit! her 'Movement' here, we note, is determined by the meaning which it
brother to acconpany her husbancl, or whether it s the i,,actiox o serves and completes.
heart ancl tongue, on e same occasion, which is elliptically compared
Even in so short a pasage, we see, ere is a marked diversity of
to that of the feaer.
analogical mode-we caz see; but as, taken up in the developing
'It is not clear'-it ought to be clear; at is the implication. The maning, we read, the stress for us doesn't fall on any diversity: we
implied criterion, 'clarity', entails an 'either/or': does te image mean r"rpond to the actual diversity in t tacit wy as we re-create wiin
this or that? The redutive absurdity of the conception of language ouiselves e totality of the communicrtion. The argument enforcing
behind the criterion us brought up is surely plain. It wouldn't be e concern that preoccupies me makes me remark here on e contrast
enough to say at the image has a meanings: no one really reading between the arulogical life in mature Shakespearian verse and the
'would
Shakspeare ask to which it is, or to what, that 'tlre swan's nature of the essential part played by analogy in expositions of
down-ieather' is meant to apply metaphorically, because it would be Wittgenstein. I say 'expositions' o him, having in particular David
so plain at the relevant 'meaning'-the communication in yhicn $3 Pears's Wigenste in ('Fontzna Modern Masters') in my mind,
'image' plays is part-is created by the utterance as a totality, and is because it is reasonable to assume that one can divine from that what
not f matt'er of ieparate local 'meanings' Put together more or less literary students, who will hardly be expected to ackle Wittgenstein's
elicitously. The force and precision with whi Shakespeare's very dificult text, would t^ke away from seminars. The analogies
English imparts its meaning here depend on the imposibility ofchoosing insist on emselves as essential to the thought in virtually every
one-of the-scholar's alternatives as right and the clear inapplicability paragraph, but they are all, or nearly all,* of the same kind-I ould
of the question he puts. ' Thi, e.g., is (supelfcially) not of the same kild: 'the pressurc exerted by those
If I were intent on developing e eme of imagery' I might say other Liads of discourse was going to cbaage e map of logical spad' prye 97.

l02 r03
 I
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
in what to me a revealing
describe them as diagrammatic and, seems
way, quite unconsciously naive: 'logical space', 'the depth of logical
space', 'areas of discourse', 'the limits of language' (with the implica-
tion that the limits are to be represented by a boundary line).
Of course, we can't escape using analogy. f mysel{ for instance,
have said that minds meet in a meaning-meet in a poem. I don't
in any case think that that use ofanalogy is open to the objection that
the Wittgensteinian expositors' addicted use is open to-that it
exemplifies habits of assumption that make intelligent thought about
language impossible. Actually 'meet' as I use it focuses an insistence
ai my book is devoted to conveying-making clear in a diversity of
ways e nature of what is pointed t. The meaning is not 'tlere' in
space, but, wiout the possibility of 'meeting' in the meaning tere
would be no world for us and no reality. That is, the 'meet' points,
as I insist explicitly, to a unigrre convergent relation-in such a degree
unique that'relation' is hardly a satisfying word, though I can't think
ofa better. The possibility ofsuch meeting is assumed in all discussion,
the assumption being so inescapable that it needn't be conscious. 0
that kind of meeting no diagram can be drawn; so the 'imagery' wit
which one tries to cll it up into conscious recognition won't have any
tendency towards the diagrammatic.
I had better quote a continuous passage in order to suggest what
kind of mental habit the analogical addiction reveals:
His tasl< was sti1l to plot the iimit of language, but he had coloe to
take a diferent view of u,hat this task inYolved. He had ceased to erpect
the oit to be one conttuous oe. For factual discourse no longer held
pride of place on the drawing board, and vhen he did concertrate
n it, he found that he was not really able to derive its rich variety of
different forms from a single essence. So there wouid be many points
of origin and many subdivisions of logical space. His task, as he now
saw it, was to lelate these subdivisions to one anoer by drawing the
network ofne5 between them. (Page 95')
I will permit myself a further brief quotation, with the aim of
making a point about language and tlought as exemplified in
Shakespeare:
Wittgenstein's early philosophy had been divisive and tolerant: he
saw deep gulfs bertreen the various modes of thought, and he believed
tbat the only kind of theory which would cover them ali would be a
tleory which explained. how each of them could exist independently in
ro+
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
its own appropriate place. His later philosophy retains both of these
characteristics, but it ofers no theorn and it draws a diferent map.
lfhe rzrious modes of thought are placed side by side on the oew map,
which does not actually show the third dimension. It must be read
against a deep background ofdream and illusion, but all that it actually
shows is the pattem of our linguistic practices. Any phitosophical
question is to be ansu,ered by bringing it donn to tLe level ofthese facts
about language. (Page r7 r.)
There are furer analogies here-all, in my judgment, infelicitous
and revealingly so; but what I quote this passage for is the insistence
on the 'gulfs', or insulating boundaries, between te various modes of
thought. That for me cn only be a cue for pointing out that Shake.
speare's use oflanguage knot s nothing of e map; his mode ofought
is inclusive. The mathematical, of course, is absent from it, but that
is not linguistic-or r's it for Pears and Wittgenstein? Shakespeare is
concerned wi meaning-meaning as language is concerned with it;
and his art exemplifies supremely the truth at the fullest use of
language is found in creative writing. Even in that brief speech of
Antony's the totality includes in one undivided meaning or communi-
cation what Urizen would distinguish as a diversity ofmodes, Analogy
in the pasage is analogical life, life analogically engendered-movement
and change that trnscend logic and defeat er2ectation; e livingness
o the passage depends on that. It picks up and reinforces the life of
the dramatic context. Octavia has her specific part in the drama, and
our apprehension of that part tells in, and is influenced by, our sense
of e emotional episode.
The 'linguistic habit', so utterly un-Urizenic, described by Johnson
made possible the profundity, complexity and intensity of a great
Shakespeare play. 'Poetic drama', ryrote Eliot, 'is more than drama in
verce.'* The litcrary student needs to ask himself what it is that, in
major prose ction, replaces tle poetic means that enabled e
Shakesperian genius to achieve such concentration, I have attempted
some answer to that question in writingabout Little Darrit A serious
offer at an answer requires a particularity that will not be the same
for two works. I will here merely point to a novel tlat is very different
from Dickens's-Wamen in Laye-and, suggest a consideration of it as
a work of heuristic thought, which it so indisputably is. I might, in a
seminar, start from the discussion-it becomes an altercation when
r Introduction to "azonatola, a play lry Charlotte liot.
r05
 T
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
Ursula joins in-between Loerke and Gudrun about the relation
between art and Iife.* The chapter contains much more, and discussion
and altercation form an organic constituent of the whole' It is easy
to show, in turn, how the chapter brings to a significant uPshot,
tragic clirrax, the action, which rs an argument, ofthe highly organized
- novel, which rs a novel, a work of novelistic genius. What seems to me
in place immediately is to quote another examPle from ,4ntory and
Cleopatra (Act I, sc. iv) of the 'linguistic habit' which, while so
obviouslynot unaware ofgrammar and logic, makes them by audacious
indifference to their authority a rneans to creative concentration:
Mettettger. PoEpey is stlog at seai
And it appears he is beloved of those
That only ave feared Caesar: to the Ports
The discontcnts repair, and men's lePolts
Give hio much wrong'd.
Ceetar. I should have known no less.
It hath been taught usfrom the primal state
That he rvhich is was wish'd until he rvere;
And the ebb'd man, ne'er loved till re'er worth love,
Comes dear'd by being lack'd, This commor body,
Like to a vagabond flag uPon the stream,
Goes to and back, laclieying the varying tide,
To rot itself rvith motion.
Shakespeare, of course, has his own miraculous complexity. Never-
theless, the effects examined above serve in their striking way to
enforce a general point, What we are concerned wi in analysis are
always matters of complex verbal organization; it will not do to treat
metaphorc, images and other Iocal effects as i their relation to the
poem were at all like that oPlums to cake. They are worth examining
-th"y ,." there to examine-because they are foci of a complex life,
and ometimes the context from which they cannot be even provi-
sionally separated, if the examination is to be worth anything, is a
wide one.
But to return now, after the cveat of exeme instances, to some'
thing simpler. There is nothing o the complexity of 'Pity, like a
naked new-born babe' about the eighth line o the following stanza:
* Chapter XXIX,
"Ioerke snortd Pith rge.
" picture of myselfl" he repeated, in derision, "Wissea Sie, gndige Frau,
that is a Kunsri/erk, a work of art. . . ." .
ro
IMAGERY AND MOYEMENT
Busie old foole, unruly Sunne,
Why dost thou thus,
Trough windowes, and through curtaines call on usl
Must to thy motions lovers seasons runl
Sawcy pedanticlue lvretc, goe cide
Ite schooleboyes, and sorvre prentices,
Goe tell Court-huntsmen, that the King wili ride,
Call countrey ants to haryest ofices;
Love, all ake, no season knowes, nor clyrne,
Nor houres, dayes, moneths, which are the rags o time.
The metaphor in
Call countrey ants to haryest oftces
r,r'ould seem to ansll'er pretty well to the notion of metaphor as
illustrative correspondence or compressed descriptive simile. To the
lovers the virtuous industry of e workday world is the apparently
poindess bustle of ants and as unrelated to sympathetically imaginable
cnds. But already in this ccount something more than descriptive
parallel or the vivid presentment of an object by analogy has been
recognized. We might easily have said 'the silly bustle of ants': it is
plain that the function of the metaphor is to convey an altitude towards
the object contemplated-e normal workday world-and so to
reinforce the tone of sublimely contemptuous good humour that is
struck in the opening phrase of the poem,
Susie old oole ,. .
The function, in fact, parallels that, in the last line of the stanza, o
'rags', the felicity of which metaphor clearly doesn't Iie in descriptive
truth or correspondence.
So elementary a point may seem too obyious to be worth making,
but, at any rate, it is now made. To put it generally, t\ne aruJ, att;tude
tawardt are likely to be essential heads in analysing the effects of
interesting metaphor or imagery. And we may now go on to make
anotler elementary point: unlikeness is as important as likenes in the
'compressed simile' of
Call countrey ants to harvest ofices.
It is te fact that farm-laboures are not ants, but very different, that,
equally with e likeness, gives the metaphor its force. The arresting
to7
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYS]S
odditv or discrepancy, taken by us simultancously with the metaphc
ricrl 'signi6canc" (the perceptin of which i' of course a judgment of
the lines), gives tlie metaphor its evocative or repesentational
felicitv and vivacity-for that it has these we may now admit, on them
d"pening the peuliarty effective expression of the attitude' It is
f.- so*-" such-compleiity as this, involving the telescoping or focal
coincidence in the mind f contrasting or discrepant impressions or
efiects, that metaphor in general-Iive metaphor-seems to derive its
life: life involves fiiction and tension-a sense ofarrest-in some degree'
And this generaliztion suggests a wider one. Whenever in poetry
*" .orn" of especially striking 'concreteness'-places where
oIu.",
the verse has such life and body that we hardly seem to be reading
arrangements of words-we may expect analysis to yield notable in-
stanc of the co-presence in complex effects of the disparate, the
conflicting or the contrasting. A simple illustration of the type of
effect is given in
Lilies that fester smeil far n'orse an weeds,
where 'ester', a word properly applied to suPPurting flesh and here
applied to the white and fragrant emblems of purity'.brings together
in'the one disturbingly unified response the obviously disparxe
associations. For a moie complex instance we may consider the well-
known (probably, owing t Eliot, the best-known) passage of
Tourneur:
Does the silkrvorm expend her yellow labours
For theel For thee does she undo hemelfl
Are lordships soid to maintain ladyships
For the poor bene6t ofa bewitching minutel
'Why
does yon fellow falsify highways
And lays his fe between the judge's lips
llo rene such a onel Keeps horse and men
To beat their valours for herl
The key word in the first line is 'expend" In touch. with 'spin', it
-. *ith
acts 'spend' on the 'yellow', turning it to gold, and
with its force of'soend'
so, while adding directly to the suggestion of wealth and luxury-,
brlnging out by1 contristing cePrP:cnce in the one word e soft
vello-wriess of t'he silk. To refer to silk, embiem of luxurious leisure,
s'labours'is in itself a telescoping ofconflicting as"ociations' Here,
then, in this slow, packed, self-pondering line (owing to the complex
r08
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
organization o meaning the reader finds he cannot skim easily over
the words, or slip trough them in a euphonious glide*) we have the
type of the complexity that gives te whole passage that rich effect
of Iife and body. It relates closely to the therne of the play, but there
is a vitality that is immediately apparent in the isolated extract, and
we are concerned here with taking note o its obvious manifestations.
In the second line, 'undo' has in it enough ofthe sense of unwinding
a spool to give an unusual eel, and an unusual force, to the metapho-
rical use. This metaphorical use, to mean 'ruin' (developing 'expend'),
makes th silkworm more than a mere silkworm and leads on to the
next line,
Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships,
where the specious symmetry of 'lordships' and 'ladyships' gives both
words an ironic point- There is a contrast n sense between the sub-
stance of the one and the nullity of the other; and 'loldships', as we
feel the word, gets a weight by transference from the'yellow labours'
and the laborious 'expending' and 'undoing' of the silkworm. And the
weight and substance in general evoked by the first three lines, in
the labouring movement of their cumulative questions, sets off by
contrst the elusiye insubstantiality evoked as well as described in that
last line, with the light, slurred triviality of its run-out:
For the poor benefit ofa bewitching minute.
The nature of the imagery involved in
lays his fe between the judge's lips
might perhaps not be easy to define, but it is certainly an instance in
which effectiveness is not mainly visual. The sense of being at the
mercy of another's will and word is focused in a sensation of extreme
physical precariousness, a sensation of lying helpless, on the point o
being ejected at a breath into the abyss. In'refine'we probably have
another instance ofa double meaning. In e first place 'refine'would
mean 'make fine' or 'elegant' (the speaker is addressing the skull of
his dead mistress). But the gold image, coming through by way of
'sold' (and the more effectively for never having been explicit), seems
i Cf. the admired couplet:
Io!where Maeotis sleeps, and hardly flovs
The freezing Tanais thro' a vaste ofsnows.
109
I
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
also to be felt here, with the suggestion that nothing can rene is
dros. In this way the structure of the last sentence is explained:
horse and men are represented by eir 'valours', their 'refined'
wortls, which are beaten for 'such a one', and so the contrast of the
opening question is clinched-'her yellow labours or rlael'
-
The pi"t has been now fairly well illustrated that, whatever tiP
the analyst may propose to himself for a local focusing of attention,
the signs ofvitality he is looking for are matters oforganization among
wordq and mustn't be thought of in the naive terms that the word
'image' too readily encourages. Even where it appears that some of te
simpler local efiects can be picked like plums out of eir surroundings,
it will usually turn out that more ofthe virtue depends on an extended
context than was obvious at firct sight. Consider, for instance, this
characteristic piece of Keatsian tactual imagery:
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth ofglobd peonies .. .
The 'globd' gives the sensation of the hand voluptuously cupping
a peony, and it might be argued that this efiect can be explained in
t"i.. f th. isolated v'ord. But actually it will be found that 'globd'
seems to be with so rich a palpability what it says, to enact in the
pronouncing so gloating a self-enclosure, because of the general
io-operrtion of the context' Most obviously, without the preceding
'glui, the meaning of which strongly reinforces the suggestive value
of e alliterated beginning of'globd', this latter word would lose a
very grear deal of its luxu riou' palpability. But thc pervasivc suggestion
of Iuiuty has a great part, too, in the effect of thc word; for what is
said expiicitly in'wealth'(and in 'rich' in the next line) is being
conveyed by various means everywhere in the poem.
The palpability of'globd'-the word doesn't merely describe, or
refer to, the sensation, but gives a tactual image. It is as if one were
actually cupping the peony with one's hand. So elsewhere, in reading
poetry, one responds as if one were making a given kind ofmovement
. giu"r, kind of effort: the imagery the analyst is concerned with
isn't" (to reiterate the point) merely, or even mainly, visual. ,ls if-the
difference between image and full actuality is recognized here; a
difierence, or a distance, that vries from image to image, just as,
where poems as wholes are concerned, e analogous difference varies
from pe- to po"m. For images come, in the way in which poems do,
I IO
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
somewhere between full concrete actuality and merely 'talking about'
-their status, their existence, is of the same order; the image is, in
this respect, the type of a poem. In reading a successful poem it is
as if, with the kind of qualification intimated, one were living that
particular action, situation or piece of life; the qualification repre-
senting the condition of the peculiar completeness and fineness of art.
The 'realization' demanded ofthe poet, then, is not an easily definable
matter; it is one kind of ing in this poem and another in that, and,
within a poem, the relation of imagery to e whole involves complex
possibilities of variety.
In fact, in more than one sense it is dificult to draw a line round
imagery (which is why the tip, 'scrutinize the imagery', is a good one).
The point has already been made that even what looks like a sharply
Iocalized image may derive its force from a wide context. Here is
imagery of effort:
Macet: If we should fail,-
Ladl Macet,:
'W'e fail!
But screw /our courage to the stickiag-place,
And. we'll not faii.
A certain force is immediately obvious in the line as it stands here.
The .4rden editor o Maeth comments (page 4t):
The metaphor is in all probability derived, as Steevens thought, froo
the screwing up of the chords ofstringed instruments.
Yet, after conrming Steevens, as he thinks, with other passages from
Shakespeare, he can conclude his note:
Paton and Liddell think the metaphor was probably suggested by a
soldier screwing up the cord of his cross-bow to the 'sticking-place'.
To take cognizance of this suggestion and pass it by in favour of the
analogy from tuning-that is a characteristic feat of scholarship. An
effect of tension can be urged in favour o either of the proposed
analogies, but beyond that what peculiar appropriateness can be found
in te tuning of an instrument? On the other hand, the dramatic
context makes Paton's and Liddell's probability an inevitability. It is
the murder of Duncan that is in questioni the menace and a sense of
dire moral strain vibrate through the scene from its opening, and
e screwing up of resolution to the rretrieyable deed ('If it were
III
I
 I
JUDGMENT AND ANAIYSIS
done, when 'tis done' . . .) is felt bodily as a bracing of muscles to the
lethal weapon ('screwing' here is no job for the finger-tips). Besides
tension, there is a contasting sense of the release that will come,
easily but dreadfully (a finger will do it now), when the trigger lets
the cord slip from the sticking-place and the bolt flies-irretrievably.
'When twenty lines farther on, at the end of the scene, Macbeth says
I am setded, and bend uP
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat
the rden editor this time notes, justly: 'The metphor of course is
from the stringir:g ofa bow'. The cross-bow has been replaced by the
long-bow.
In the following lines of Donne the most notable effect of effort'
equally inviting the description 'image', is not got by metaphor:
0n a huge hi[
Cragged, and steep, truth stalds, and hee that wiil
Reach het, about must, and about must goe;
And wbar the hills suddenness resisLs, $inne so
Here the line-end imposes on te reader as he passes from the 'will'
to the 'Reach' an analogical enactment o the reaching.*
We might perhaps say'a metaphorical enactment', though what
we have here wouldn't ordinarily be called metaphor. The important
point is that it provides the most obvious local illustration ofa pervasive
action of the vese-or action in te reader as he follows the verse:
as he takes the meaning, re-creates the organization, responds to the
play of e sense-movement against the verse structure, makes the
soicession of efiorts necessary to pronounce the organized words, he
performs in various modes a continuous analogical enactment. Such
an enactment is apparent in
about ,]ust, and about must goei
and, if less obvious, sufficiendy apparent in
what the hills suddenness resists, tlinne so,
i Cf. Keats's Ta utu?1rrt:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head acoss a brook - ' '
t12
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
where the sense-movement is brought up abupdy as by a rock-face
at 'resists', and then, starting on another tck, comes to a successul
conclusion.
There is no need to multiply illustrations, though a great vaiety
could easily be musteed. The point has been suffciently made that
in considering these kinds of effect we find 'imagery' giving place
to 'movement' as the appropriate term for calling attention to what
has to be analysed. That we camot readily dene just where 'imagery'
ceases to be an appropriate term need cause no inconvenience, and
there seems no more profit in attempting a definition of 'movement'
than of imagery'. The important thing is to be as aware as possible
of the ways in which life in verse may manifest itself-lie, or that
vital organization whi makes collections of words poetry. lferms
must be made means to the necessary precision by careful use in
relation to the concrete; their use is justified in so far s it is shown
to fayour sensitive perception; and the precision in analysis aimed at
is not to be attained by seeking formal definitions as its tools. It is as
pointers for use-zz use-in the direct discussion ofpieces of poetry that
our terms and definitions have to be judged; and one thing the analyst
has to beware of is the positiveness of expectation (not necessarily,
even where fixed in a definition, a matteroffull consciousness) thatmay
make him obtuse to the novelties and subtleties of the concrete.
The term having been introduced, it will be best to proceed at once
to an instance in which e useful pointer would clearly be 'movement'-
Suppose, then, one were asked to compare these two sonnets of
Wordswonh's and establish a preference for one of them:
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a NuD
BreatNess with adoration; e broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquiility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth wi his eterrul notion make
A sound like ttrunder-everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that rvalkest with me here,
If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therebre less diyine:
Thou est in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worshipp'st at the Tempie's inner shrine,
God being wi thee when \Me know it rot,
I I3
I
 1
JUDGMNNT AND ANALYSIS
Surprised by joy-impatient as the Wind
Iturned to share the transport-Oh with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb,
That spot u'hich no vicissitude can 6nd?
Love, faithfui love, recall'd thee to roy mind-
But how could I forget thccl Through what power,
Even for the least division ofan hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous lossl-Tat thought's return
'W'as
the wo$t pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one onln when I stood forlom,
Knowing my heart's best treasure was no oore;
That neither present time, no! Ieals unboln
Could to my sight that heaYenly face restore.
One might start by saying that, though both offer to be intimately
personal, the second seems more truly so, and, in being so' superior;
and might venture further that is superiority is apprent in a greater
particuLrity. Faced now with the problem of enforcing these judg-
ments in analysis one would find that 'imagery' hardly offered an
opening at all. On the other hand there is a striking difference in
movemint, a difference registered in the effort ofattention required of
the reader as he feels his way into a satisfactory reading-out, first of
one sonnet, then of e other. An efiort, as a matter of act, cannot
properly be said to b e requi'redby Calais Beathi it contzins no surprises,
no turns imposing a eadjustment in the delivery, but continues as it
begins, with a straightforwardness at every point and a continuity of
sameness that makes it impossible to go seriously wrong. Sarprised b1
jay on the contrary, demands a constnt nd most sensitive vigilance
in the reader, and even if he knows the Poem well he is unlikely to
satisfy himself at the first attemPt, such and so many ae e shifts
of tone, emphasis, modulation, tempo, and so on, that the voice is
required to register ('movement' here, it will be seen, is the way the
yoice is made to move, or feel that it is moving, in a sensitive reading-
out).
The first wold of the sonnet, as a matter of fact, is a key word'
lfhe explicit exalted surprise of the opening gives way abruPtly to the
contrasting surprise of that poignant realization, now flooding back,
which it had for a moment banished:
-Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the siient tomb '
1r+
IM.GERY AND MOYEMENT
Then follows a surprise for the reader (e others were for the poet
too):
That spot which no vicissitude can fnd,
It is a surprise in the sense that one doesn't at rst know how to read
it, the turn in feeling and thought being so unexpected. For the line,
instead of insisting on the renewed overwhelming sense of loss,
appears to offset it with a consideration on the otherside ofthe account,
as it were-there would be a suggestion of'at any rate'in the inflection.
Then one discovers that the'no yicissitude'is the admonitory hint ofa
subtler pang and of the selreproach that becomes explicit in the next
line but one. There could be little profit in attempting to describe the
resulting complex and delicate inflection at one would finally settle
on-it would have to convey a certain tenativeness, and a hint of
sub-ironical flatness. Then, in marked contrast, comes the straight-
forward satement,
Love, faithful love, recall'd thee to my roind,
followed by the outbreak of selreproach, which is developed with
e rhetorical emphasis of passion:
But how could I forget theel Through what power,
Even for the least division ofan hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be bnd
To my most grievous lossl
The intensity of this is set off by the relapse upon quiet statement in
That thought's retum
Was the worst pang that sorrow eye! bote,
-quiet statement that pulls itself up with the renewed intensity (still
quiet) of
Save one, one onln
where ttre movement is checked as by a sudden scruple, a recall to
precision (particularity, intensity and emotional sincerity are critical
themes that present themselyes to the reader in pretty obyious relation
here). The poignancy o e quiet constatation settles by way of te
'orlorn'-
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn
II5
 "T
JUDGMENT AND ANAI,YSIS
-into a steady recognition of a state of loss, the state, the unending
privation, being given in the flat evenness of the concluding lines, in
the expressive movement of which the rime-scheme plays an important
Part:
when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart's best treasure wa9 no rnore;
lfhat neitherpresent time, nor years unborn
Could to ray sight that heavenll face eBtore.
This is the kind ofanalysis-a kind where the pen is peculiarly at a
disadvantage as compared with the voice-by which one would back
the judgment that n Sarprised by joy we have deeply and finely
experienced emotion poetically realized, the realization being mani-
fested in a sensitive particularity, a delicate sureness of control in
complex efiects, and, in sum, a fineness oforganization, such as could
come only ofa profoundly stirred sensibiiity in a gifted poet.
Of tie movement o Calak Beach one can give only a negative
description; it yields no analysis to pair with that given of the move-
ment of urprised by joy, and seems, in the contrast, to have no life.
Nor can anything be found in imagery, or in any aspect, to offset
this disparaging account. Calai Beach, in fact, in spite o the offer
of intimate personal feeling, must be judged to be, in an unfavourable
sense, wholly general. By this I mean that it gives the reader nothing
better than the soothing bath of vague religiose sentiment that, with-
out Wordsworth's help, he might enjoy any serene summer's evening,
watching the sun go down over the sea. We might say that the sonnet
gives us 'the sunset emotion'. To say that, of course, isn't necessarily
to damn it. But if a poet invokes a stock experience of that order he
must control it to some particularizing and re6ning use; and refine-
ment and particularity are what we look for in vain in Calah Beqeh.
We might clinch the case against it by bringing up as a third term
in the comparison e sonnet Uqon Westminster Bzdgr, which comes
conveniently just before it in te old Oxford Boo,{ (No. 5zo):
Earth has not anything to show' more fair:
Dull would he be ofsoul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its Eajestyi
This City now doth like a garment lt'ear
The beauty of the oorning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, dones, theatles, and temples e
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
rr
IMAGERY AND MOYEMENT
All bdght and glittering in the smoleless air.
Never did sun more beautiflly steep
In his $t splendour vallen rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deepl
The river gdeth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! e very houses seem asleep;
And aU that mighty heart is lying stilll
So far as the distinction between 'general' and 'particular and personal,
isin question, (\on Wertminster Bridge looks as if it ought to stand
with Calai Beath. Need, we, in fact, do more than replace .sunset,
by'sunrise', and say that [\an Westm;rlster Bridge gives us 'the sunrise
emotion'l That would suggest the difierence between that sonnet and
the highly 'particular and personal' Surpised lry joy. And yet surely
there is another principle of distinction by which these two sonnets
would be bracketed as good poems (though not equally fine) over
against Calais Beach. What is it that makes this last so positively
distasteful to some readers (for I have discovered that others besides
myself dislike it strongly)l In any case, Upon Westminster Bridge,
when compared with it, exacts a decided preference, and the question
is perhaps best answered by asking why this is so.
The opening looks unpromisingly like that o Calais Beachi the
key words, 'fair', 'soul', 'touching' and 'majesty', suggest e same
kind of solemn unction, and a glance at the closing lines seems to
confirm the suggestion:
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his owo sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
And the first point tIat, as we read through from the beginning, calls
for particular comment seems also corroborative-the simile here:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning
-isn't thata very loose similel It was inspired, one at first suspects,
by an easy and unscrupulous rime to 'fair', and its apparent first-to-
hand quality suggests a very facile concern for'beauty'. The particu-
larity that follows we put, without enthusiasm, but duly noting a
superiority over Calais Beach, on the credit side of e account:
tt7
 IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
silent, bare, silent, bare,
Ships, torvers, domes, theatles, and tenples e Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples e
OPen uuto the 6elds, and to the stY; Open unto e elds, and to e sky.
Al1 bright and glittering in the smoteless air'
The suggestion is further enhanced by tle unenergetic leisureliness
It seems a very generalized particularity, one easily.attained'.
And yet
and lack oftension (as ifgiving time for two large indicative gestures)
we should by'nw be aware of a decided superiority in is sonnet of at last line, which, giving metrically and in sense stmcture so
that makes ii a poem of some interesti so tlat some further inquiry is much room to its two nouns, also reinf,orces by contrast the evoctive
necessarv. The clue presents itself in the unobtrusive adjective strength of e packed preceding line. Then comes the key adjective,
is-ok"lr'. Though unobtrusive, it is far from otiose; obvious as it
'smokeless'-
looks, it does mo. than it says.* It conveys, in fact, bo its direct
Al1 bright and glittering in e smoteless air
force and the opposite, and gives us localJy in its working the structure
ofthe poem. foi *it po.., u ike Catais Bear, has a structure, and
-revealing the duality of consciousnes out o which is sonnet is
what ttris is now becomes Plain. organized: the City doesn't characteristically 'lie open', and e
Looking back, we realize now at 'like a garrnent' has, after all' 'garment' it usually 'wears', the pall of smoke, is evoked so as to be
a felicitv: ]t keeps e Citv and the beauty of the morning distin*' co-present, if only in a latent way, with the smokelessness.
while oTering to e view only the beauty. any m.utr!1q or draping
Never did sun more be.4utifully steeP
susestion simile might have thrown ovet the 'ships, towers'
In his 6rst splendour vallel, roct, or hill;
dJes, tleatres, and temp-ies' is eliminated immediately by the 'bare'
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
that, preceding them, gets the rime stress (so justifying, we now see, The river gdeth at his own sweet will:
e 'wear' thai it picks up and cancels). They Dear God! the very houses seem asleep
e Anal all at oighf, heart is lying stiI!
0Pen
tle
reader's consciousness
state in -Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples are invested, in this
-te fact is made present as a realized somet, with the Wordsworthian associations of valley, rock and hill,
bv an extrressive use of the carry-over (the 'lying open' is enacted) nd
and the calm is so preternaturally deep because of a kind of negative
l eoo rime which, picking up the resonance of'lie' with an effect
" co-presence (if the expression may be permitted) ofthe characteristic
o l"i,ing us wherc we were, enhances the suggestion of a state:
urban associations. 'Calm' hasn't the obvious ambivalence of 'smoke
r
Cortrast Bridges' Fron igh Ollnpus and the domelzts aurts, and Hopkios's les' but beyond question the stillness of e 'mighty heart' is so
cotmrrlent Lettert to Robert BridgeJ'XLYII touching because of a latent sense of the traffic tltat will roar across
Courts car eve! Lre do'med in any case' so tht it is rcedless to
tell us that
those on OlymPus are domeless. No: better to say the Kamptuliconkss the bridge in an hour or two's timei just as'sweet'(along with
cou"t o, Minto'.-"rrcustic_tileless courts or vulcanised india-rubberles! 'glide') owes its force to the contrasting associations of the metro-
courts. This would strike a keynote at once and besPeak attentiotr' nd
if politan river.
the critics said those things di aot belong to the Period you would have :fhe structure analysed is not a complex one, and perhaps may be
(as you have aow with dnele$) the o'tethelming answer that
you never
ought too obvious to have been worth the analysis. The point to be
ithey did but on the contrary, and tat Prometheus, vho vas al:E: a made, however, is that Calak Beach hasn't even this measure of
to Edison and the Jablochof
l"opheiurrd ". " mechaniciao mre thaa equal
iaoiU" aoa Mocmaio Patent Izver Truss with self-adjusting duplex
gear complexity; it has no structure, but is just a simple one-way flow of
to say tbat emphatically lhey had got.-those standard sentiment. Consider the key words: 'beauteous', 'calm',
ard attachments, meant 'o'But if you
improvements on Olympus an be did not intend they should' 'holy','quiet','Nun','adoration','tranquillity','gentlenes','broods',
you" *uyio ihis 'fraDk' treatmetrt aad are incliled to thi that
"rioot."" 'mighty Being', 'eternal', 'everlastingly', 'solemn', 'divine', 'worshipp'st'
iurrt .i!f,i u ro.a *ith daiteblt, he relembe! that that fult is foutrd
inlaarirst lifle. 'Temple', 'shrine', 'God'-there is noing to counter the insistent
II8 ,19

JUDGMENT AND ANA],YSI
repetitious suggestioni nothing to qualify the sweet effusion of solemn
sentiment. In fact, the cloying sameness is aggravated by an element
not yet noted: instead of e kind ofcomplexity introduced by'smoke-
less,t we get the sestet, which, with its'Dear Child! dear Girl!'and
'braham's bosom', adds saccharine to syrup and makes the sonnet
positively distasteful.
There are, of course, innumerable ways in which 'movement' may
come up for consideration. Suprised ly joy was chosen as an extreme
instance, in which 'imagery'hardly gave the analyst an opening at all.
Commonly'movement' and 'imagery' demand attention together. The
ollowing is a simple instance:
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled litde ,,raves that leaP
In 6ery ringlets from their sleeP,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
The first two lines suggest a preoccupation with pictorial effects,
and they invite a languorous reading-or would, if we didn't know
what follows. Actually, an approach might be made by asking how it
is tiat, though te stanza is so clearly Victorian, we could have said
at once, supposing ourselves to have been reading it for the first time,
that it is clearly not Tennysonian or Pre-Raphaelite. The first brief
answer might be that it has too much energy. We are then faced wi
the not difficult task of saying how the effect of energy is conveyed.
To begin with,
the starded litde waves that leap
In 6ery ringlets from eir sleep
clearly don't belong to a dreamy nocturne' The 'startled', itself an
energetic wod, owes some of its force to the contrast with what goes
before (even ough the first two lines are not to be read languorously)
-a contrast getting sharp definition in the play (a good use of rime)
of 'leap' against'sleep',
It is an energetic couplet. The energy is active, too, in 'ery',
which is apt description, but doesn't reveal its full value till we come
to 'quench' in the last line, e most interesting word in the stanza'
That re as well as thirst shall come in wi the metaphor is ensured
by e 'fiery', and in 'guenching' e speed e poet betrays (he
t20
Y
IMAGERY AND MOYEMENT
probably couldn't have said why 'quench' came to him) how he has
projected his own eagerness-his ardour and desire for the goal-into
the boat, pushing on with his will, in a way that must be familiar to
everyone, that which is carrying him forward, The nature ofthe energy
that thrusts forward through the tranquil night has defined itsel
(it
concretely by the time te second half of the poem has been read
must now be given):
Then a mile ofwarm sea-scented beach!
Three 6elds to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt ofa ligted matc,
And a voice less loud, thro' its jols and ars,
Than the tlvo hearts beating each to each!
Neither of the stanzas, it will have been noted, has a main verb, a
Iack intimately related to the mood and moyement of the poem. The
absence of main verb, it might be said, is the presence of the lover's
purpose and goal: his single-minded intentness upon the goal and the
con6dent eagerness with which he moves towards it are conveyed by
the overtly incidental, by-the-way, nature of the sensations and per-
ceptions, and the brisk, businesslike succession in which, from the
beginning of the poem on, they are noted and let behind. Though
incidental, they are vivid, as in a moment of unusual vitality and
receptivity, and that this vividness-it is at the same time a vigour of
report-should carry with it no attribution of value suggests e all-
absorbingness of the purpose and focus of attention. The succession
of notes, in act, conve),s a progression. And the effect of energy
observed at t}te outset deives from ths particular kind ofmovement-
the particular sense of movement that has just been analysed. The
movement, of course, derives its peculiar energy from e local
vividness, but even such enegetic imagery as
the quick sharp scratch
nd blue spurt ofa lighted match
owes something to e general movement as well as contributing, and
it can hardly be said that 'quench' in the first stanza (an efrect of the
same order- it works alongwith 'slushy'aswell as having the metaphor-
ical value already discussed) contributes more than it owes.
The movement, it might be commented, isn't very subtle, nor is the
total effecti and that is true. But the simplicity has its illustratiye value,
and te poem is an unmistakable instance of a strong realization,
12t
 r
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
Vigour o tht peculiar kind, obviously involving limitations, is
characteristic of Browning, but is rarely manifested so decidedly as
poetic virtue, and so inoffensively to the sensitive.
To proceed, by way o concluding this section, to another com-
panson:
\d) W'ate; the silver dush retuming
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship ofsunrise burning
Strands upon the eastem rims.
.Wate:
the vaulted shadow shatte,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of oight in tattere
Strews the sly-pavioned land.
() Out of the wood of thoughts that grow by night
To be cut down by the sharp axe ofght,-
Out ofthe night, two cocks together clow,
Cleaving the darLness with a silver blorv.
And bright before my eyes twin trumpeters stand,
Heralds of splendour, one at cither haod,
Each facing each as in a coat-oF-arms:
The roilkers lace eir boots up at e farms.
Suppose one were asked to compare ese in respect of metaphor
and imagery, which they both use with striking boldness-a boldness
of poetic stfization that might be thought to constitute a similarity.
If we Iook at the first stanza of (a) we might be inclined to say that
the decorative effect tiere was the main purpose. Certainly there is a
sense in which e metaphorical imagery is offered for its own sake
and (apart from being beautiful and striking) not or anytling it does;
it demands immediate approval, in its own right, as something sel
sufficient and satisfying-we mustn't, for instance, ask what becomes
of the burning ship as e silver flood mounts (or does itl) and full
daylight comes. The unction of the imagery here, in short, is to hold
the attention from dwelling in a realizing wy on the alleged sanction
-the ctuality ostensibly invoked, It demands attention for what it
immediately is, but only a very limited kind of attention: the reader
takes in at a glance the value offered; it is recognized currencyi the
beauty is conventional and amiliar.
And 'decorative', after all, is not altogether the right word, It
might do for e opening of Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat (which was
r22
IMAGERY AND MOVEMENT
possibly at the back of Housman's mind as he wrote the stanza)i but
there is an emotional drive here tiat would prompt the accepting
reader with 'lyrical'. That drive expreses itself in e urgent moye-
ment, which is intimately related to the qualities noted in the imagery.
In fact, an admirer of Housman might say that the imagery, lik the
movement, expresses a passionate indocility to e,perience, along wi
a wilful hunger after beauty. A return comment would be that (unless
some justifying significance emerges later in the poem) the kind of
beauty ofered values itself implicitly at a rate at a mature mind can't
endorse.
When we come to the semnd stanza the comment must be at e
'indocility' has become a violence-a violence to common erperience,
and te relation ofthe imagery to observable fact a gros and insensitive
falsity. The tempo and the whole nature of the passing o night into
day are outrageously misrepresented by 'shatters' and the piture of
the land strewn with rags of dark. The 'shatters' is reconciled with
llre :tatjers' (the 'vault' to the'tent'), it will be noted, only by the
bluff of the rime, a kind of butlying or dazing effect; and the stamp
of the movement, hobnailed with alliteration, emphasizes the insen-
sitiveness. The movement, in fact, provides the most convenient index
of e quality of the poem. To have cut ofi e two first stanzas from
the rest does Housman no injustice, as the reader may conrm by
turning up Y (Reveilh) in,4 Shrapshire Lad. And in confirming h
will be verifying alsoat a challenge to a reading-out would be a good
introduction to the analysis: even an ardent admirer would, aftei e
second stanza, find it difficult to declaim the poem convincingly, so
embarrassing is the patent inadequacy of the substance to t"
importance of moyement and tone, the would-be intense emotionl "sseitiv"
rhetoric.
It is a difference in movement that strikes us firct as v/e pass from
(Q to (b). Associated with this difference tlere is, we become aware, a
di#erence in the imagery: whereas Housman's depends on our being
taken up in a kind of lyrical intoxication that shall speed us on in
exalted thoughdessness, satisfied, as we pass, with the surface gleam
of ostensible value, Edward Thomas's invites pondering (we register
that in the movement) and grows in signicance as we ponder it:
Out of the wood ofthoughts that grow by night
To be cut down by the sharp are oflight,-
Out of the night, two cocks together crow,
Cleaving the darkness with a silver b1ow.
123
I
 JUD G]VENT AND ANALYSIS
be said that it seems
-Of the use of metaphor here too it might -to
be decorative it intention, rather than dictated by any pressure ofa
oerceived or rcalizcd actuality. To present a 'wood of thoughs' as
teing 'cut down' by ,n 'rxe f ligl'r; Iooks like a bold indulgence.in
the ileasure ofstylirtion. Y"t *" h^t'e to reco(nizethat 'wood', with
its suggestions of tangled and obscure penetrulia, stirring..with
.lrnd"iir" life, is not inf"li.itou, metaphor for the mental life of
"i
slcep. And when in re-reading we come to 'silver blow'we have
to
recgnire a -"taphorical subtlety-that is, a subtlety oforganization-
thatistingui.he" b) from (a) (it i' "ubdety o[ crganization, of cou rse'
1
that Drod;ces the cffect, in Thoma', of a pondering movement)'
'Cleaving' identifies the effcct of the sound with that of the axe, the
slcam oiwhich gives an edge to the 'silver' of the blown trumpet'
th" 'r;lu.r-rornirg' t.rnrpet is a familiar convention, and the
element of wilful faniasy in this translation of the cock-crow becomcs
overt in the heraldically stylized twin trumpeters:
And bright before my eye twin trumPetem stand,
Hemlds of splendour, one at either hand,
Each frti rg ca.l' as in a toat-of-arms'
We are prepared so for the ironical shift of thc last line, where daylight
reality asserts itsel:
The milkers lace their boots uP at the farms'
The ooet. aware as he wakcs of the sound and the light together, has
hr.orr. himsclf in a half-waking dream-fantasy, which, when it
has indulged itselfto an unsustainable extreme ofde6niteness, suddenly
has to yield to the recognition of reality.
Returnin3 to the comparison between () and (a), we can now make
another point, one that as been covered under the term'movement''
Housmarr's proffer of his imagery is simple and simple-minded:. 'Here
is poetical gld; take it! Here is radiant beautyi be mov.ed'' What
we
f frorn the first line in Edward Thomas's little poem is,
"r "*rr"
along with the imagery, an attitude towards it; an attitude subtly
conveyed and subdy develoPed.
124
REAIITY AND SINCERITY
(rrr)
REALITY ND SINCERITY
The following comes from an exercise in critical comparison involving
three poems: Alexander Smith's Barbaro, which is [was] to be found
in an earlier edition of the old Oxford Book of English Verse; Emily
Bront's Cold in the earthl andHardy's.4fter a Journey.The challenge
was to establish an order of preference among these poems, But only
two of them are seriously examined below.
About which of the three poems should come lowest in order of
preference there will be ready agreement. Alexander Smth's Barara
has all the vices that are to be feared when his theme is proposed, the
theme of irreparable loss. It doesn't merely surrender to temptationi
it goes straight for a sentimental debauch, an emotional wallowing,
the alleged situation being only the show of an excuse for the indul-
gence, which is, with a kind of innocent shamelessness, sought for its
own sake. If one wants a j ustiflcation for invoking the term 'insincer-
ity', one can point to the fact that the poem clearly enjoys ts pang|
to put it more strictly, the poem offers a luxurious enjoyment that,
to be enjoyed, must be taken for the suffering ofan unbearable sorrow.
The cheapness of the sentimentality appears so immediately in the
movement, the clichs ofphrase and attitude, and the vaguenesses and
unrealities of situation, that (except for the purposes of elementary
demonstration) there would be no point in proceeding to detailed
analysis: the use of the poem for present purposes is to serve as a foil
to Emily Bront's-which it does by the mere juxtaposition,
Its quality as foil to Emily Bront's is plain at once. The emotional
sweep of the movement, the declamatory plangency, of Cold in the
aarl might seem to represent dangerous temptations; but in respond-
ing to the effect of passionate intensity we register what impresses us
as a controlling strength. It remains to be seen just what tat is:
Cold in the earth-and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only I-ove, to love thee,
Sever'd at last by Time's all-severing wavel
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the loountains, on thal northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves coyer
Thy noble heart for ever, ever roorel
t25
T
 -I

REALITY ND SINCERITY
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
Then did I learn how eristence could be cherish'd,
Cold in the earth-and fifteen rvild Decembers
Strengen'd aud fed witlout the aid ofjoT:
From tlese brown hills have melted iuto spring:
Faithful, indeed, is e spirit that remembers e suggestion that something quite opposed to the luxury of 'memory's
Ater such years ofchange and sufedng!
rapturous pain' is being 'cherished' in the poem; that resolute
Sweet Love ofyouth, forgive if I orget thee' strength of will, espousing the bare prose 'existence', counters e run
'While
e wrld's tide is bearing me along; ofemotion.
Oer desires and other hoPes beset me' Cald h the earth, rhen, in its strong plangency, might reasonably
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrongl be judged to be a notable achievement. I say this, however, in order
to go on to judge that Hardy's .4ftcr a Jnrney is a much rarer and
No later ght has ghteo'd up oy heaven'
No second morn has ever shone for me; finer ing, to be placed, as a poetic achievement, decidedly higher. I
Al1 mv life's bliss from thy dear life was given' approach in this way because I have not, in fact, found that those
All'my fe's bliss is io the SraYe wit} thee' who confidently place Cold in the earth above Barbara do, as a rule,
jge ,ljter a Joarnel to be obviously superior to Cold in the earth,
3ut lvhen the of golden dreams had perish'd'
days
and yet, for such readers, the superiority can, I think, be demonstratedi
And even Despair rlas Powerless to detroy;
at is, esublished to their satisfaction.
Ithen d I learn how exiitence could be cherish'd'
Strengen'd and fed wiout e aid ofioy'
The difrculties, or conditions, at explain the failure of response
on e part of intelligent readers lie largely, it would seem, in the
Then did check the tears ofuseless passion-
I nature ofthe superiority itself, ough no doubt some stfistic oddities
Wean'd my young soul from yearning after ine; -what ere is some excuse for seeing as such-play their part. Here
Sternly denied its buming wish to hastea is the poem:+
Dn to that tomb akeady more an miue'
I{ereto I come to view a voiceless ghost;
And. even yet, dare oot let it langoish'
I Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me!
Dare nt indulge in memory's rapturoos pain;
Up the clifi, down, till I'm lonely, lost,
Ooce drinting deip of that divinest anguisl5 And the unseen waters' ejaculations awe me,
How could i seik the emPt/ !orld agaiol
Where you will nert be there's no knowing,
The ooem does unmistakably demand to be read in a Plangent Iacing round. about me everywhere,
an overt assertton With your nut-coloured hair,
declamaiior,; in, that is, a rendering that constitutes And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and goiag.
the.dangers sucn
of emotional intensity. If we ask why, nevertheless'
any Point dlsturblngly presenr' I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;
an account might suggest don't seem at Yesi
*e can observ for arrs*er that what is said in stanza seven- Through e years, through the dead scenes, I lave
tracked you;
Then did I checl< the tears of useless passion W'hat have you now found to say of our past-
Scanned across the dark space wherein I lacked youl
rnore than sail; it represents an active
princiPle at informs the
-is Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought divisionl
uni ,n"r" ,tong with the plangency' We have it in the move'
it Things were not lasdy as frsdy well
"""*
;",,;; ";h fr. "tionulitv, " sting matte-of-factness
of
With us twain, you telll
thatieems to plal against the dangerous runnlng.swell' But all's dosed now, Time's derisiou'
good sense, d.espite
ia -rk". u. take suggestion that some strength corresPonding to
e
;*" rr" rrirrr', whic-hio not themselves melt, underlies e poem' . Reprinted fron Callacted Paerrrr by Thomas Hardn by kind permission of
obvious hint at the nature oe strength in
the llrustees of the Htdy Estate aDd of Messls Macmillan and Co. Ltd.
;;;;;
t26 127
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
I what you are doing: you are leading me on
see
To the sPots rr,e knew when we haunted here togethe!,
The 1'aterla11, above lrhich the mist-bow shone
At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,
And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollorv
l[hat it seems to call out to me from fortl years ago,
When you rvere all aglorv,
And not e thin thost that I now frailly follow!
Ignorant ofrvhat there is flitting here to see,
The waked birds prcen and the seals flop laziln
Soon you 'tl'iil have, Dear, to vnish from me,
For the stars close their shutters, and the darvn
rvhitens hazilY.
Trust me, I mind not, though Life lourc,
Te bringing me here; nan bring me hcre again!
I am just the same as when
Our days u'ere a ion and our paths through florvers.
A difference in manner and tone between Hardy's poem and the
other two will have been observed at once: unlike them it is not de-
clamatory. The point should in justice lead on to a Positive formula-
tion, ani this my not come as readily; certain stylistic characteristics
that may at first strike the reader as oddities and clumsinesses tend to
delay the recognition o the convincing intimate naturalness..It turns
out, however, that the essential ethos of thc manner is given in
Where you will next be there's no knolling'
This intimacy we are at first inclined to describe as 'conversational',
only to replace that adjective by 'self-communing' when we have
recognized that, even when Hardy (and it is signicant that we say
'Hay') addresses the 'ghost' he is still addressing himself. And it
shoulin;t take long to recognize that the marked idiosyncrasy of
idiom and diction going with the intimacy of tone achieves some
striking precisions and felicities. Consider, for instance, the verb in
Facing round about me evet)'where . .
There is nothing that strikes us as odd in that'facing', but it is a use
created or the occasion, and when we look into its unobtrusive
naturalness it turns out to have a positive and 'inevitable' rightness
the analysis of which involves a precise account of the 'ghost's' status-
128
REALITY AND SINCERITY
which in its turn involves a precise account of the highly specific
situation defined by the poem.
Then again, there is that noun in the ourth line which (I can
testify) has offended readers not incapable of recognizing its felicity:
And the unseen w'aters' ejaculatons awe me,
'Ejaculations' gives with vivid precision that sound that 'awes' Hardy:
the slap of the waves on the rocky walls; the slap with its prolonging
reverberant syllables-the hollow voice, in fact, that, in stanza three,
'seems to call out to me from forty years ago' (and the hollowness
rings significantly through the poem).
In fact, the difference first presenting itself as an absence of decla-
matory manner nd tone, examined, leads to the perception ofpositive
characteristics-precisions of concrete realization, specifi cities, com-
plexities-that justify thc judgment I now advance: Hardy's poem,
put side bv side with Emily Bronte's, is seen to have a great advantage
in realitl, This term, of course, has to be given its due orce by the
analysis yet to be done-e analysis it sums up; but it provides the
right pointer- And to inr.oke another term, more inescapably one to
which a critic must try to give some useful force by appropriate and
careful use, if he can contrive that: to say that Hardy's poem has an
advantage in reality is to say (it will turn out) that it represents a
prfounder and completer sincerity.
Emily Bront's poem is a striking one, but when we go back to it
from Hardy's the contrast precipitates the judgment that, in it, she
is dramatizing herselfin a situation such as she has clearly not known
in actual experience: what she offers is betrayingly less real. We find
that we have declamatory generality-talking abaut-i.n contrast to
Hardy's quiet presentment ofspecic act and concrete circumstancei
in contrast, that is, to detailed complexity evoking a total situation
tat, as merely evoked, carries its power and meaning in itself.
Glancing back at Alexander Smith we cn say that whereas in postul-
ating the situation o Barara (he can hardly be said to imagine it)
he is seeking a licence for an emotional debauch, Emily Bront
conceives a situation in order to have the satisfaction of a disciplined
imaginative exercise: the satisfaction of dramatizing herself in a
tragic role-an attitude, nobly impressive, ofsternly controlled passion-
ate desolation.
The marks of the imaginative selprojection at is insufficiently
informed by experience are there in the poem, and (especially with
129
I
 REALITY AND SiNCERITY
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
could Prompted by these lines we are at rst inclined to say that the journey
the aid of the contrst with Hardy) a duly perceptive reader has also been a journey through time. But an essential effect of the
discern and describe them, without knowing the biographical fact' poem is to constate, with a sharp and full realization, that \re canfizt
theme'
They are there in the noble (and, given the intimate ofrer of te go back in time. The dimension of time dominates the poem; we feel
declamation, and in the accompanying generality, the
"r*o*ical) of a it in the hollowness of the 'waters' ejaculations'-the voice of the
br.n.. of ry convincing concreteness presented
.situation -that 'cave just under', a voice that has more than a hollowness of here and
soeaks for iueif. Locally we can put a finger on the significance
ofthe
the last line of the fi$t stanza: nowi 'it seems to call out to me from forty years ago.' It calls out here
d'eclamatorv mode in, for example,
and nowl but here and now it calls out from frty years ago. The
Sever'd at last by Time's all-severing wave' dimension of time, the 'dark space', is in the voice itself, so startling
in its immediacy, and, with the paradoxical duality of the experience,
The imagery there, or the suggestion of it, is essentially -rhetorical;
so annunciatory that the forty years ago from which it seems to call
tt ,obt"1.'"tr*r,ion, the imp-ressive saying' provides the impressive-
" we recogntze out is not, all the same, here and now, but forty years away. And
ness, and when we consider the impressiveness critically
that to resoond to the declamatory mode r to be unexacting in respect
memory, having 'tracked' the woman 'through the years, through the
dead scenes', attains only a presence that is at the same time the
oi otr r.,l'imagery: the unrealized rhetorical-verbal will receive a twhen we huntcd
absence felt more acutely. The reference to the time
"f"r".,." that Lnnot be critically justied' Time's 'wave' is of the
would seem, by 'grave', it makes as
it here together' contains an implicit recognition ofthe different kind of
order of clich; prompted,
.i."-*a the osing iime o the stanza-a claim to strength that it 'haunting' represented by such presence as she has for him now, when
their togetherness is so illusory. And by this point in the poem we
-
certainlv cannot sustain.
know that the 'ghost', if an evanescent and impalpable thing, is in
iuni;rg hack to ,lfter a Joarnel we may now look at the words
(strange as that must seem when one no ordinary sense a ghost.
in the firsine that have made it 'We
can now go back to the opening lines of tire poem and judge
bu, t"k.r, the Poem) aracteristic of Hardy's clumsiness Actually.it
fairly what it offcrs, and, having done that, tell how it demands to be
is characteristic of the supreme Hardy achievement, the Poem ln
read. 'View', we rccognize, is no insensitive perversity; it is the word
which what at first may look like clumsiness turns out, once the
aooroach to the Doem ha been found, to be something very different- compelled by the intensely realized situation, and we feel it imposing
details itself on Hardy (and so on us) as right and irreplaceable: such seeing
srnething supremely right. The vindication of the questioned
b, then, in terms of what follows, and of the as memory will do (given success in its'tracking') will be an intent
in the firit 1" -rit dwelling of contemplation upon the object. And the object will be-
whole efiect in which they have their Part' Of 'hereto', the.archaism
again the word is, with a poised recognizing endorsement, accepted
that (in such a use) Iooks like a Hardy coinage, we need say linle more
when it comes-a 'voiceless' (it will be a one-sided meeting, and the
than'that it co*es to look like one'of those Hardy coinages which'
voice will be the cave's)'ghost': on this word, again after a kind of
in ,h" gr""a Poems, cease to be anything but natural and inevitable'
judicially recognizing pause, the reader's voice descends and rests, as
Its bala"nced slowness is precisely what was needed-as appears when
on a kind of summing-up close to the sentence.
we corrsider'view', whi, again, has been challenged as a perversity'
one characteristicaily settled n by Hardy, it would seem, for the sake
It will be seen, then, that to recognize the rightness of 'view' and
'yoiceless' and give them their due value is to recognize the kind of
of a perverse alliteration with 'voiceless'.
rendering demanded by the line: a slow and deliberate 'Hereto I come',
But we cannot judge 'view' until we have realized just whul i:.th"
followed by judicial discovering and accepting rests on 'view' and
nature of the 'gntt'Ifi,i, should have been suficiently established
'voiceless', and the concluding tore for 'ghost' that makes it plain
by the time we have come to e opening of e second stanza:
that no literal ghost is in question-so that the 'nut-coloured hair and
Yes; I have re-entered your olden haunts at last; gray eyes and rose-flush'should bring no disconcerting surprise. Once
Through the years, through the dead scenes, I
the deliberate stock-taking poise of the opening line has been
have tracked You.
r30
r3r

I
 JUDGMENT AND ANAI,YSIS REALITY AND SINCERITY
appreciated, the rest of the poem is safe against the kind of misreading bringing,hm here, he may be supposed to mind
is not the
that would give the movement a jaunty sing-song. .1r, of the long journey and the ramble byarduousness, ";f.
The sel-communing tone is established in the first four lines, and f:_iyi
Dnng me here., savs Hardv. .is ";lfr.. the
to make me experience t the-full
ere is no change when Hardy pases from the 'its' of the second line desolaton and th p^ng-io giue a sharp
edg ." ifr" f."i'"ii*",.
to the 'you' o the fifth. He remains 'lonely, lost' throughout the derision. But I don't mlnd_imorc than
don.t _;rd; ;;;;;';"r"
poem; that is not a state which is altered by his communion (if that again ! I otd to tife, even though
is the word) with the 'ghost'. The loneliness and the desolation are
life ,""ii*i'U"ii'',r"t
is tle" ."*"-rr"j ,""r"r, ,it"g,
^"
far from being mitigated by the 'viewing' in memory; for the condition l:T:, ll" focus 1f my.aflyaion,
at e same ti,"", in","p,r, .o
of the'viewing' is Hardy's full realizing contemplation ofthe woman's :1"0,,*"1.':T:Io"::#il:ll "
irremediable absence-of the act that she is dead. in the way in which the two
."If_::,].1, *lit1 appears
aspects,
llhere are two places in the poem where a dificulty of interpretation
has been found. One of them is e last line o the second stanza: ff[X':U# J: J?tk$;:]:;;]1iril:?:: :ff *n;
usfor comparison to that other_poem of the
But all's closed now, despite Time's derision.
The laice ('Woman much missed); br,
samei"rr, lrfr r_r3;,
prev?ilsl setting off-by contiast the"r;;"1r,;;
;;, il,'ln".a*
The last line doesn't mean: 'All's closed now, in spite of Time, or f:,:m
tnrs poem rt does not. .4fter a "fournel
astonsirirg *",
i, _ii.f, i,
Time's derision, standing in the way of its being closed.' It isn't a closes on th aftrmrtion. Bu,
simplg direct statement of fact, It conveys a quite complex attitude
if afirmation, is t he wor (ard r."*, to b., n"c.ssa ry
one), ir mustn,t
suggest anything rhetor;cal; the affirmurion
that entails a weighing ofconsiderations against one another and leayes
sense. The opposite of the rhetorjcal
is dramati in;';ri;;;;;..
them in a kind opoise. The effect is: 'Well, anyway, all that's over
festation in the opening ofrhe stanza:
rr", i" ,"rf ,ir"riirf"
J"f_
nov/, the suffering of division, things not being firsdy as lasdy well-I
recognize that, tough what, of course, I find m;'self contemplating Ignorant ofwat there is flirting here
now is e mockery of time; it's Time's derision I'm left wi.' There to see,
The ua,:ed birds preen and e seals floo lazilv,
is certainly no simple, and no preponderant, consolation. In the'all's Soon you u ill have, Dear, to valish
from e,
closed now' there is an irony, to be registered in a kind ofsigh, ',4//,s For the strs close eir shutters, and e
awn
closed', not only the sufering, though that, Hardy recognizes, is of whitens hazily.
course included. But the last word is with Time's derision; and the
rendering of the closing phrase, 'despite Time's derision', makes a Y:,o": -lo has responded perceptively to the mode established at
ur(.oegrnnlng o the poem would read this as a trivial sinq_song. but
testing demand on the reader: the phrase must be spoken with a
certain flatness of inflection-an absence of clinching effect, or of any
it clearly doesn't lend itself to noble plangen.-;Fii11;;P3iji'0;,
are key,words-and.f op',.while being_sL
suggestion of a sum worked out a.a"aiy *" ,.r."r#;#j:,
a feticity of po*ic strengthirenderirg,h;;;;;,
The other place is at e four line from the end of the poem: :::::l:'11:,i-e
as rr doesr wrrh matter-of-facr prccision
and immediacy fthere is no
Trust me, I mind not, though life lours, ,o,ou, the resonance), it conveys both the
1,r.9,.1.I emptiness and the
The bringing me here . . . quo dran ordtnarrness that are essential notes o
the ets with which
the poem leaves us at the end. Ar.,d ,th"
strr.
Not to take the significance of that'Trust me, I mind not' is to have
ll: lgi, otd:!li"g.touch to H.rrdy's "ior"ilffit..,*"i;""
,o.a. ir,;;;;];
failed to respond to the complexity of the total attitude, and to hve me sprflt hrs cult of memory- This""i,ra"
spirit is manifected in the stars
ailed to realize the rare kind of integrity e poem achieves. It is to suggestrng to h1m, and to us, as they disappear,
not sublimities and the
miss the suggestion of paradoxical insistence, e intensity o directed vault of heayen, but_lamplit cottage *;"ao*r_rrroUut;il;v*J;;
fecling and will, in 'Nay, bring me here again'. For what, in the nrs reco[ectrons o .orty years ago,. The note is intimate_wiih the
32 33

I

JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
touch of humorous fancy, it is tenderly amiliar and matter-of-fact'
No alchemy o idealization, no suggestion of the. transcendental' no
noblv imasinative self-deceiving, attends on this devotion to the
*.roru oF, woman. It is the remembered as it was that Hardy is
int"nt r,. 'f am just the same': that is the frnal stress. ie is a'thin
shost'-matterin; onlv because she matters to him- It is astonishing
to- . pe.rlir relity of the remembered but non-existent is
conveyed: vivid-
nut-coloured hair,
And graY eYes, and rose-flush
time'litting', a
-and real enough to be addressed; yet at the same
'thin ghost'; neier, that is, more tltan someing recalled in memory,
so address is never anything other than sel-communing' It is
thai the
the purest fidelity, the sincerest tribute to the actual woman' Hardy,
with the subtlesi and completest integrity, is intent on recapturing
what can be recaptured of that which, with all his being, he judges
to have been thJ supreme experience of life, the realest thing, e
centre of vlue and meaning.
The sense in which, though he now frailly follows, he is
just the same as when
Our days were a joy, and our paths througb flowers
has been, when tle poem reaches this close, precisely defined, and his
right to af,rm it established beyond questioning. It is a Poem that we
rgnize to have come directly out ollie; it could, that is, have been
wrien only by a man who hd the experience ofa life to remember
back through.'And recognizing that, we recognize the rare quality
of the manivho can say wi that truth 'I am just e same', and the
rare iltegrity that can so put the truth beyond question. It is a case
in which-w know from the art what the man was like; we can be
sure, that is, t'hat personal qualities we should have found to admire in
Hardy if we could have known him.
Gr)
PROSE
As everyone knows, the language we all speak and- write is full of
'dead metaphors'. We call em 'dead' because, when we use the
t34
PROSE
abstract words that, in fact, can be seen to have originated in metaphor,
we haye no intention, or consciousness, ofbeing in any way meapho-
I
rical. The analogies have remarked on in David Pears's discursive
prose are another matter: ey are more than conscious, having been
I
deliberately chosen for a given expository purpose, and call them
diagrammatic.'Logical space' and'areas of discourse' no doubt involve
ghosts of imagery'; that is what gives point to the expositor's resort
to them. But what gives the point provokes at the same time my
adverse commenti for the 'clarity' achieved through the use of such
analogies is destructive by reason of their infelicity: only by illusion
are they analogies, and they destroy at the outset the possibility of
succesful thought about the basic issues in question. They betray
habits ofassumption that disable or the undertaking in view the mind
that resorts to them.
That is not the kind ofobjection that led Herbert Read to rewrite
(a) o the following coupled pasages as (J). I found the exercise in his
Englith Prase t1le. His theme in the given place was the undesirability
ofgatuitous metaphor; metaphor that wasn't necessary to the present-
ment in discursive prose of e offered thought, and he claimed that
in () he had eliminated the gratuitous metaphors of(a) while retaining
the essential thought-content:
(a) The Orford Movement may be a spent wave, but, before it broke on
the shore, it reared, as its successor is now rearing, a brave and beautiful
crest ofliturgical and devotional lie, the force ofwhich certainly shifted
the Anglican sands, though it failed to uncover any rock-bottom under-
lying them, It is enough if now and then a lone swimmer be borne by
the tide, now at its full, to be dashed, more or less urgentln upon the
Rock of Peter, to cling there in safety, while the impotent wave recedes
and is lost in e resdess sea.
(/) The Oxford Movement may belong to the past, br.rt before its end it
produced, ke its successor oto-day, a 6ne sense ofliturgical devotional
fe, the force of which certainll had some efi'ect on the looser elemente
ofthe Anglican Church, though it failed to reach any fundamental body
of opinion. It is enough that the Movmt, when at its height, led a
ew desperate individuals to become converted to the Church of Rome,
and there ese remained in security of mind when the Movemerlt,
losing its force, became a merely historical phenomenon.
The comparison, it should be plain, brings out how little the meta-
phors of the original passage are, in relation to the thought and judg-
ment it communicates, otiose. In eliminating them Read has eliminated
I35
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYIS
the writer's insistent intention-his essential ought, it can fairly be
said. In fact Read's opening phrase, 'The Oxford Movement may
belong to the past', announcs that he is going to reverse the im?licit
conclision to which the original passage moves. A 'spent wave' that
'breaks on the shore' will be followed by other waves. The writer,
in fact, repudiates e suggestion that the Oxford Movement 'belongs
to the pasi' in the sense at Read intends; before it broke on e shore
'it reared', he says, 'as its successor is now rearing, a brave and beautiful
crest of devotinal and liturgical life'. Read tansTates ('trdduttore
traditore') this crest into a'ne sense of liturgical devotional life', a
change at very decidedly impoverishes e word 'force' in his version:
'bent
The*reductive turnl into fat falsification in what he does with
'orce' in the rest of his sentence: it 'certainly had some effect on the
looser elements ofthe Anglican Church, though it failed to reach any
fundamental body of opinion'. But the original surely conveys (with
an accomplished urbanity at is a/the mode of ought) the judgment
that there srras no rock-bottom underlying the Anglican sands' And
when Read comes to deal with e metaphors of the final '?ntence,
one can find among them, or an]'where else in the original passage,
no licence for the 'desperate' that figures-saliently-in his reduction'
The evaluative attitude, explicit enough in the metaphors of the
original, is an essential component of the expresed thought- The
wrer is entitled to his conviction; his last sentence makes plain that
he consciously and fully intends a significant contrast between 'Angli-
can sands' and 'rock-bottom'. That sentence contains not only'the
Rock of Peter', but also 'the tide', so tltat the se is not merely con-
trasted as'restless', but is subject to tidal recurrences too (shifting e
Anglican sands, though not e Rock); the implication-clearly is that
this"'Movement' musi not be ought of as final, but will be succeeded
bv others-wi possiblv decisive results. Read too is entitled to expres
s anitude. whicn is iticut and anti-Catholic, but he is not entitled
to his mode of stylistic criticism, which involves his ofierirg his
substitute for e p ssage from Blacfnars as giving us e thought and
meaning of the original.
It is-salutary tJreflect that a well-known intermediary between
literature and philosophy (he vi,as at one time Eliot's colleague in.ttre
editng o Thi Criterioi) produced that confident demonstration in a
book fiered as a basic ai io intelligent critical thought. I wish I could
czll at an astonishing paradox: it is, in kind, too familiar.
The following passig is still prose, but there are grounds for safng
36
PROSE
at e prose is more poetic than that of the writer in B/ac ifriars, and
at the same time more intellectual:
Meantime it is my earnest request that so useful an undertaking may
be entered upoo (if their tr{ajesties please) r.ith all convenient speed,
because I have a strong inclination bebre I leave the lvorld to taste a
blessing which we mysterious can seldom reach till we have got
',vriters
into our graves, whether it is that fame, being a fruit grafted on the boy,
can hardly grorv and much less ripen till the stock is in the earth, or
u'hether she conceives her tlumpet sounds best u..hen she stands on a
tomb, by the advantage of a rising ground and the eco of a hollow
vault.*
That is ocourse Swift, In calling it'more intellectual' one means
that it demands a greater alertness ofthe thinking-mind in the reader.
The writer of the other passage is overtly Catholic in his assumptions,
one of them being that the reader substantially shares them and will
see not merely a felicitous neatness but profound inevirability in the
advance from 'rock-bottom' ro the 'Rock of Peter', and in general
identify himself with the intention metaphorically conveyed. For any
reader the hardly questionable felicity is a matter of the neatness and
unorced consonance with which the metaphorical totality makes its
point; but if, instead ofthis, we said, 'expresscs its thoughtj, we should
have to add, 'about which there is nothing to suggest that the writer's
ought will surprise by unexpectedness in its developments, or any-
thing strikingly new"'
Swift, as represented even in so brief an extract, is patentlF a very
difrerent kind of writer. I have characterized his prose as in a sens
more intellectual than the others, but, as I have made plain in my essay,
'The IronyofSwift',f that doesn't mean that I endorse the conventional
emphasis on intelligence as amonghis distinctive characteristics. In fact,
if he helps us to a geter awareness of the nature of intellgence, he
does so by exemplifying its defeat. What produces the astonishing play
of imagery is hatred of lie, himself and the reader. His intellectual
power is manifested in the way in which he makes the reader take te
merciless impact of ths hatrecl and expose te unwilling self to the
communicated sense of life as insufferable and its own essential being
as contemptible and hateul. The method is one osurprise, and since
* The Tale af a Tub-
I The Connox Pursuit, page 73.
r37
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSI ?RO E
e intention is bo
so insistent and so limiting, the remarkable tl.ring paragraph). W hat this book offers is not
an extended collection ofcriti_
is that the method should work so unfailingly.
The reader is held as in an apprehensive fascination by the para- -.ll:*..i:"r
It is.necessary that I should keef
concete, but tn the interesr omy avowed
t;;i"J;i"*ild';"
undertaking I must observe
doxical and menacing intensity, the paradox being the co-presence in a strict e-conomy, That undertaing, i"
himself of a response to the relaxed rational tone and a simultaneous ;iio;,p".;,;:';il;;g
out the force of my contention the"";
th;inteiiig;;;;*;.;.r.
sense of some insane energy of animus, Intensity and energy are rterature entarls.the study oflanguage in its
fullst use, th,e.on""oiu"t
manifest in e brutal insistence of the imagery. But this insistence rmplrcatrons ot the word 'linguistic,as
used in general by phiiosoihers
can't be separated from the discursive movement of the prose-the
quasi-logical way in which it runs on as if this were a matter-of-fact
bcing disa,trous)v misteadini. r h,"" ;.pi;."J';;
dificult in. an argument su'ch as mine 'to ."r.r.J ri' ,!H;hH,y
exposition. Here too the imagery can be spoken of as analogical, but i" iiT,.1l
orpy",,,,r,,, .. r,",-"_,,,ry 1,ffi:ij
the analogical in Swift is a very different thing from what we haye in ::T::.::i:ll?tk.;,
poerc u-ses ol language for what I may perhapi call one,s concrete
the piece from Blaclfriars, which recommends itself to the reader in terms of discourse. But it remains necesary to
view as immediately acceptable and containing no surprises. There the argument doesn't involve any naive assumitions -rL" it ptuin tt riit
total developed analogy enforces conceptions that one can think of as ,t"". ii" iiilr"r*"
prose and'poe-try'. For one thing, I have
expounded discursively. Swift's imagery, in the contrast, strikes us as ferle.en in mind the need
ro lnsrst thar, rn spite of the ways in which
the.positive civilization,
the thought itself; it seems to assail us in tle concrete wit]rout media-
tion. So intense is his reaction to life that we don,t think of it as {enolncgf.by Blake with such sirong reason affecied tt. Ut"rrtr." of
the EngJish larrguage in the eighieenth *"*ry,
statable; instead ofdescription we have this, the product ofdestructive rrrerary achrevement made the ninereenth
if,r"'rrir.tl"",
ccntury one of the gratest
creativity, in which we have, not talking about, but handing over or creatiye ages in human history.
presenting. There ;J an insistence of mental activity, manifesting itself I will, then, before I pceed to discuss what te
immensely
in The Tale of a ?aJ in the inexhaustible resource wirh which he takes
the reader by surprise and catches him on the rvrong oot. In each l:pr:s:ntat;:,e.Dryden did n far Love, clinctr ifl. ir__,,*
what we might relevanrly and abundantly,
instance it is wit, but distinctively a poet's wit, that achieves with ITlto.t :,, ,nd i"n" g."at
'prose' by adding one criticul co*.ntr.yin.
intimidating instantaneousness the unoreseeable felicity-a felicty l]]l!lf, fouci,under
y, what T select as appropriate
ljtlrql: ^",y comparative for the purpose I,found
that of its nature disconcerts. This it is that might seem to justify the ln.,a proposed
common emphasis on intellectual distinction in references to wift.
exercise on an examination prp.a. but
wrtl be ptan at once that one of the passages serves ii
But it is not intelligence that prevails in Swift's intensely and incessantly to the other.
,r";" ir;i ; ;
communicated attitude to life.*
In e essay on Swift to which I have referred I draw a contrast (a) We- sat down by tle side of the road to- continue the arguoent
between Swift's chrcteristic irony and Gibbon's, which depends on a begun
half a mile or so before, I am certarn lt was an algument because I
confident appeal to normatiye assumptions shared in common. I shall remem ber r ly how my tutor

ol rePry I .perc
argued and how ri-r"*",
not do that here, though I have in mind the pasage from chapter XV llstened with rny eyes fixed obstinatelv on ""irfr"ra
tr,. ",-,..1 'a ".r-
of The Deeline and Fall I should choose for tl.re purpose (e fourth on the road mdde me look up-ard thcn I
,;;;;;;;",:ffi;;r;:;:
xrar. r oere are acquarnulccs oflater years, familiars, spmates, wiom
* I ended the essey, 'The Irony of Swift': 'We shall not nd Swift lemrkable I remember less clearly. He marched rapidJy to_"rd;il;; #:
by a,hang-dog Swiss guide) wi rhe nie'n
for intelligence if we thiok ofBlake,' philosophy-addicted Cambridge intellectual, ;";rl*;;;";;;r;;
whe the essay filst appeared, (io, ScrutinJ), asked me in an ilcredulous and calmly
traveller. He was clad in a trnicker-bocker "f
suit,b;i;;;;;;;;; ;^:
militant tone, what I meant by tht sentence, (Oae used to be told of the spot at e wore short sochs under his laced f""rr,
hygienic or conscienriou+, were surely
f"i *"r ii.inll
*i;""t,
which, suddenly stopping, he had planted his stick iu the towpath gravel and i.ugin"rin". *, .^;;;;rgd
exclimed: 'That's where I saw the a* in Wittgenstein!'-he leferred to the to.rhe. public gaze and to rhe ror ic;ir
Tractatas,The pftsent book is my answer to his question,) "if.fgi "i,lri";'irlrl. i;l
beholder by the splendour of their marble_like"conditil;J;;;rt.;
r38 r39

I
 PROSE
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSiS
light ment and sympathetic respect. A preliminary glance at them leayes
tone of young ivory. He was the leader of a small caravan' The
ofa healong]exalied satisfaction with e world ofmen and the scenery one with the certainty tlat (/) is the foil, and couldn't be anything
oi-ount"ioJiUo-ined his clean-cut, very red face, his short, silver-white else. It has, of its nature, a design on the reader, and the design is so
whisLers, his innocently eager and triumPhnt eyes' In Passing h cast
a crude and so obvious as to be insulting-at least, at would be one's
el"nc" of kindly curisity-and a friendly gleam of big' sound' shiny comment if one had been erpected to take the passage seriously. fn
iee to*ards " m"n nd the boy siLting ke dusry tlamPs by the fact, the design is virtually explicit: the first sentence announces it
roadside, with a modest knapcack lying at their feet' His white caives with e 'meek' (incontinently repeated nd reinforced) and the
twinkled sturdily' the uncouth Swix guide with a surly mouth- stalkecl 'coarser and more prosperous men', and what ensues as the filling-out
like an unwin! bea! at his elbow; a small train othree mules foiloweil of the human cse, or situation, that the writer offers to present is all
in sinele file J lead of this inspiring enthusjast' Two ladies rode past clich-down to the old mother and the sister who live on his pay.
.,ne bhind the other, but from the way they sat I only saw eir calm'
This is all that need be said about (), except in so far as, in its
uniform backs, and the long ends ofblue veits hanging behind far down
quality as foil, it helps with the commentary on (a). But we didn't
over their identical hat-brims. His nvo daughters, surely' An industrious
sallow need the contrst to be struck by the distinction of the passage that
lusgaee mule, wi unstarched ears and guarded by a slouching'
dr"iu-"i btought up the rear. My tutor, after pausing for a look and a comes first: it is unmistakably by a great master. The contrast prompts
faint ncile, resuoed his eanest argumert' us to describe what produces at conviction as n astonishing speci-
ficity. There is in the whole paragraph nothing approaching clich
l) There's a cerlain sort of man whose doom
jn the urorld is disappoint'
t-' luckless rri'rmphs in his meek
in any sense the term might carry. The 'unforgettable Englishman'
-"ot-*fro excels in it-and whose might in anoer context have seemed to invite the adverse charactei-
career of life, I have oten thought, roust be regarded by the tind
eyes
ancl achievements zation in the most obvious sense, but here the whole actual context
above with as much favour as the splendid successes
evokes in compelling conceteness what it is that makes the English-
of coarser and ore ProsProus xoen' As I sat \'ith the lieutenant upon
man unforgettablei the djective has nothing of the reach-me-down
deck, his telescope laid over his lean legs and he loo\ing at the
sunset

witb a pleased, withered old face. he gave me a litde account o lus about it; we are beyond questioning, when we come to it, that it is
history. I ta'he it he is in norvise disincned to talk about it, iDPIe- on the way to being completely validated-to eceiving its full charge
as

ii irr L n"t been seven-and-thirq' years in the nary, being somewhat of particularizing force. We are beyond questioning because the
Prince
more mature in the seflice than Lieutenant Peel, Rear-Admral eyocatiye process by which statement and the general are transcended
e Joinville, aod other comarders who need not be mentioned' He has, in the very few preceding lines, worked on us s potently:
i. r',r"ry *"11-"du.uted man, and reads prodigiously-travels' istoties'
liu", o worthie and heroes, in his simple way He is not in We sat down by e side ofthe road to continue the argument begun
the le.ast
".in"nt
angry t his want of luck in the proession 'Were I a boy to' half a mile before, I am certain it vas a arguBent because I remember
morrorv,'h said,'I would begin it agrin; and when I see-my school- perfectly how my tutor argued and how without the power of reply I
fellows, and how they have got on in !ife, ifsome are bette: -oft'than
I am' listened with my eyes 6xed obstinatelT on the ground. A stir on e road
discontented'' So he carries made oe look up-aad theo -
i-na "ry ut" *or.", and iave no call to be
her Maiestv's mails meelly thro rgh is world, waits uPon Port-
admirals an capuins in his old glazed hat, and is as proud othe
pennon Creatiye art here is an exercise in the achieving of precision (a
ii,n" Uol, ofhis little boat, as if it were flying from e- mainmast of a pocess that is at the same time the achieving of complete sincerity-
thundering man-of-war' He Bets ttvo hundred a year tor
tus sewlcesl the elimination of ego-inteested distortion and all impure motives)
r rrr"old *ott and a sister ving in England sooera'here' who I in the recovery of a memory now implicidy judged-implicitly, for
"i
*'i *"g", ltf,oogn
"r
he never, I swear, said a word about it) have a good actual judgment cn't be stated-to be, in a specific life, ofhigh signi-
portion of is Prince1Y iacome' ficance. The evocation of concrete thisness begins in terms of the
to disciplined act of remembering, which, of course, is selective, and, in
What the two passages my be said to have in common is the aim
its re-creativity, creative, as all our achieved apprehension of the real
present a characr ttre contmplation of whom evokes both amuse-

r40 r+r

I
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
must be. The recoveed memory is the remembered, implicidy, in the
re-creating evocation, valued and placed: it is to le noted at the
unforq"t;ble vision is enclosed organically in a vision of the writer's
o*r il*pros"d young self-the attitude towards the Englishman goes
with an attitude towirds Conrad's youth. For it is, ofcourse, Conradi
I saw at once that it could be no other; I couldn't, however, recall any
novel or tale in which the passage could have come' Then I realized
that it is Conrad's account of his conceiving the ambition to become a
British master mariner, which I had read in Personal Record on
the ppearance of is in the nineteen-twenties' (The other piece I
guess to be by MarrYat.)
" The hiehv Conradiin passage ofiers us a study of the diEerence
bet-eer, ,er itemizing dscription and the evoked specificity that a
great writer effects wi his distinctive use of the English language-
istinctive and unique, yet generating a vital something in which
minds can meet, and in tht sense real'
There are acquaintances of later years, familiars, stipmates, whom
I remb"r lex "arly. He marched rapidly towards the east (attended
by a hang-dog Swiss guide) with the mien of an ardent anil fea ess
travellet.
These coupled sentences enforce, as the whole paragraph, with its
diverse weal of unforeseeable felicities does marvellously in sum'
itt"-,ru,t that it is the creative writer who maintains e life and
Dotentialitv ofthe language. The first ofte sentences might have been
ir.-ir,"r, in t",,"r. fh'e ctrasting second, its exalted dignity enhanced
bv the oarenthetic 'hang-dog' guide, suggests Gibbon describing the
of u Ro*"n co-nq,,"roi' It is not parody, though it registers
"*n."
the element of amua"a"rri in th" -,ture Conrad's sense of the unfor-
n.iolt"-, Drompting, this critical percePtion, to reflect on the
rr"rrti"t pun plaved 1y the opening two sentences in e subtlety
which. fr rad.r, it life, vividness and reatity) of e whole' itself instantaneously, with such inevitability does it make us see, and,
' But -hrt I meant to cll attention to immediately was the pregnant
and diverselv manifested truth that, for Conrad, a great wrlter ot our
century to compose in the living English of our time was to use
fr"elv nd flexibiv the resources of a language that had a literature
behid it-a great'literature still (to creative writers) relevantly native'
f, Coroair"a it is equally true of Lawrence and of Eliot) to write
out oitt p."'r".,t is to *rit" ort of, present that is with an
immensely
"
irti"r t"A,io" o" his part the presnt ofthe past than is represented
r+L
PRO SE
even by the most cultivated contemporary speech. This goes with the
general trut} at, in his artist's rightness, precision and ireedom from
a$ectation, he is in the good sense othe word (as both Lawrence and
Eliot the major poet are) sophisticated-a truth the force of which is
exemplified in the sentence tat follows the pair just quoted:
He was clad in a knicker-bocker suit, but as at the same time he wore
short socks under hts laced boots, for reasons lr hr'ch, whether hveienic
ol
_conscientious, were surely imaginative, his calves, exposed't the
public gaze and to the tonic air of high altitudes, dazzledihe behotder
by the splendour of their marblelike condition and their rich tone of
young ivory.
The sophistication-the implicit presence of a cultural background
transcending what 'vernacular, suggests-can be pointed to at nce in
'the tonic air of high altitudes, and ,their marbe-like condition and
their rich tone of young ivory'. But ofcourse that is very far from all
coming under that head, as we ciLn, with great readineis to particu_
lzrize, if we use the couple of opening sentences as giving a norm
.say
of.modern 'ordinary' prose. It is unnecesry to proce"d'by oering to
I
substantiate the 'readiness'. Instead, wili emphasize that the pa'ra-
graph is all of a piece-as a poem is: it impoies itself, in its idio_
syncratic livingness, as naturl and unaffected modern English, What
in it is-.most vividly idiosyncratic, in fact, may itself be ielt to refer
us implicitly to the cultural heritage; it is unmstakablv and inimitablv
Conrad, but a Conrad for whom tlie English Ianguage hat had adopte
and- naturalized him was the language not onl| oiShakespeare, tut,
in the not distant past, o Dickens. What w" hru" i. th"
antiesis ofclich; it is, given us in the words which"u"ry*i,"r"
it as unerringly
found and seems to replace, perceived speci6city-the Corr."d
perception.'His white calves twinkled sturdilv'- characteristicalh.
unprecedented collocation of words that *e ieel to have achieve
in an implichly evaluative way, realize an respond in a given totai
effect. Itever)'where so in th paragraph; .theiicalm unifim backs,,
is
'an industrious luggage mule, with unstarched. ears'_but furthei
instancing is unnecesary. It remains to nte that the final sentence
completes the enclosing .frame' that is in and of the memory, being
essental to its subtlcty-the subtlety that rr the livingness.
The passage compares with the ipeech from ,44aibeth as a cretiye
use of language of a closely related order. We have left the word.s
r+3
 Y
JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
'image' and 'imagery' behind, and there is no harP Provoction- to
use ti"m h"re; ye-t the process and tle e$ect are of the kind in which
'imagery' *as observed to play a major pa*: this i" prose, but wat
it with its concrete speclhctty' as opPosed to
achieves is presentment
-'taking
the mode of about' which we call 'description' (I haven't
discussed, not thining it necesary the expressive play in it of
'movement').
It is proie, and prose-unlike what can be found in Ulysa, for
instarc"-in an obvious way that signifies a clear continuity wi the
'modern' discursive prose th;t was e;tablished in ttre great seventeen-
centurv change.
Th time i^, .o^" for considering what Dryden did widr r{nton!
and. CleaPatra.
(")
.ANTONY AND CLEOPTRA'
ND 'LL FOR LOVE'
',!ll for Love is bevond doubt a proud and lovely masterpiece; it is
the ne flower of bryden's genius' It was at one time, indeed for a
very long time, fashinable io decry it in compariso-n -wirh ntany
,n Clrolot o,but Dryden was not irying to doat all e same kind
of thing as Sak"speai". Free opinion will be forced to admit at
oughihakespear's play contains finer poetry- than could
ever;rite-as ire wo,rld have been the first to -Dryden
admit-Dryden's has a
more tragic effect.'
I takelhis from the Introduction to e 'World's Classics' volume
of Restoration Tragedies,and I take it as representative' The critical
position would not-be generally found surprising either in the academic
world or in the world ofliterary fashions (the crtic, Proessor Bonamy
Dobre, hatl standing in bot;. So, ough to myself Dryden -and
Shakespeare seem to e doing ings so different in-kind as to make a
serious and sustained compaiison obviously impossible, the quotation
serves to countenance me in offering to enforce is view critically by
wav of illustrative exercise-a suggestion of critical meod'
the superiority in poetry at makes it seem to me absurd to
" a*o plays in tragic efiect (not to speak of attributing ^the
"o-prr"
oer sup"riority'to Dryden) is conclusively manifest in the fi-rst
tw"nty lin"s oi ,lotor1'ord CleaPatra. It is an immediately felt
r4+
.ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA'
superiority in e life of the verse-superiority in concretenes, variety
lnd sensitiveness-that leaves us with 'eloquence' instead of'life'as the
right word for Dryden's verse. This superiority asserts itself every-
where; it is a matter of the general texture of the play, and could in
spoken discussion be exemplified point by point in e least eloquent
:rnd exalted places. Nevertheless, the exigencies of written criticism
tlictate the choice ofsome sustained passage, where demonstration can
be effected with force and economy. There is an obvious choice, and
it will, in fact, serve peculiarly well:
Ewarut. I will tell you.
The barge she sat in, Jike a burnish'd throne,
Bum'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to e tune offlutes kept strote, and made
The watervrhich they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her onn person,
It beggar'd all description: she did lie
In her pavion-cloth o gold, oftissue-
O'er-picturing that Yenus where we see
The ancy outwork nature: on each side her,
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like sming Cupids,
With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
ad what they undid did.
gri?pa. O, rare for Antony!
Eruarat Her gendewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings: at the helm
A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tactle
SweU \aith the tou"hes of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely Iiame e ofice. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of the adjacent u harfs. The ciry cast
Her people out upon her; and Antony,
Enthroned i' the market-place, did sit aione,
Whisng to the air; which, but br vacancn
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And. made a gap in nature.*
| ,4ntax1 and ClzEatra, Act Il, sc. ii,
1+5
 JUDGMENT AND ANAI,YSIS .ANTONY AND
CIEOPATRA,
How does that look in comparison with Drfen's rendering of itl* who, though he has a technical deliherateness
ofhis own, is, in his use
of Engtish,.e"sentia[y Shakc.peercan). Th;
,ldtolj. To cTear her sel, ;tr.ctlr;; ;i;i rh" ,n.tu_
For sending him no Aid, she came from Egypt. a vigour of sensuous ralization tf,"r ;i *"or"t
l!:r,'buri'dl
wrse have had; the force
otf,.r_
Her Gally down the Silver Cydnos row'd, of.burn, is rellected back through ,burnish.d.,
.burning'
The tackling Silk, the Streamers wav'd rvith Go1d, roo) upon .barge,, ..1;;;;.i;
The gentle 'Winds were lodg'd in Purple Sails: fI::y
as tt rvere,":beore our eyes: we are
takes fire,
much more than meiely told that
Her Nymphs, like Nereids, round her Couch, were plac'd; te barge .burn'd'.
Further, ,f," ,""."r,ri..p"ri i"",, frrf.*i"g
Where she, another Sea-born Venus, lay. immediately upon the quiet
Dollaella. No more: I would not hear it,
I rvill tell you,
,4ztot1 . O, yo:o mrst!.
She lan and leant her Cheek upon her Hand, has e effect of the ejaculatory superlative_the tone
And cast a Look so languishingly sweet, explicit in
As il secure of all Beholders Hearts,
It beggar'd a1l descdption.
Neglecting she could take 'em: Boys, like Cupids,
Stood fanning, with their painted Wings, the Wirds tf O, t}e way, this.beegar'd'is
not, here, an orisinal meta_
That plaid about her Face: But ifshe smil'd, 1"-.1 creation
phoncaJ
A darting Glory seem'd to blaze abroad: (though the New English Ditiorr.y giu.I
thir m the
That Mens desiring Eyes were never teary'd;
earliest instance of the ph m-.e;, f".i i, ,,,. ,r.i,l i.
,"r." i, ir. i,
But hung upon e Object: to soft Flutes
context the surroundino Iife seems to inform
it,'so tharere i. an
The Silver Oars kept Time; and while they plaid, effect of re-creation, in"spite ,a;;.-ilil;;;;':ii;;;rrr"
The Hearing gave new Pleasure to the Sight; clich. ", ^
And bo to Thought; 'twas lIeay'n or somewhat more; But ere has, before this, been something else
to notice. Shake_
For she so carm'd all Herts, that gazing Crowds speare's superioritv over Dryden i. ,ror
_"."tfu,. ,tr i, oii,rpr,o.r,
Stood panting on the shote, and wanted Breath it is equally obserable_if nt as amenuft" ao'*.i,t"r,
To give their welcome Voice, rone and movemenr. These too exhibit
.o__"nt ry_in
Shakespeal _"*"ttor.
It should be plain that a formal comparison is hardly possible; power of realization, of making l*ngurg"
,i1r*,i""*a
Dryden's version ofies in itself little lodgment for detailed commen- Thre is'i" "*.,n
"."r,"
, r" .,*",i,ai,g "r ._
il:::,ry :?t:ff,l,rerating.
uouno up wrth_the metaplrorical life. We become aware
try, and must serye mainly as a foil to e Shakespearean passage. The of-it as
sensitire variation. As already noted, ifr"
juxaposition invites us to point to this, that and the other in Shakespeare ;**"",".y
"rr-.t
and note that Dryden o$ers nothing corresponding. Our general
observation is that Shakespeare's velse seems to enact its meaning, to I will tell you
do and to give ather than to talk about, whereas Dryden,s is merely sets of by contrast the restrained_intense of the
assonantal passage, in
descriptive eloquence. The characteristic Shakespearean life aseris which the thing described seems present ,.rd ,,ot _". tii
itself in Enobarbus's opening lines. of. In
The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, e poop was beaten gold
Burn'd on the waler
there is relaxationr we slin back into .was,
sequence,'barge'-'burnish'd'-,burnd,' is alien in telling, e genine irc full
-The assonantal value. But with esucceejing inversio"
spirit to Dryden's handling of the medium (it reminds us of Hopkins 1i" ,n:i ['.r..?r?i, _
",i,u.o;
t llfot Lotte, Act iiii page 58 ia Fhte Rettoratian Tragedia Purple the sails
svorld's Classics),
r+6 r+7

JUDGMENT AND ANAIYSIS
-we have again e tone of immediacy, and in the next clause the
superlative intensity is explicit' After this,
e oars wete silver
comes as a relapse into mere telling, into narration at distance. What
it introduces is an efiect ofmovement that may be said to be implicitly
of the order of metaphor; while there is nothing obviously mimetic
in the rhphm, the wter follolving faster seems to be more than told
about, it seems to be done:
tle oars were silyer,
Which to the tne offlutes kePt stloke, and xoade
The lvater which the), beat to follow faster,
As auorous of ei! stlotes.
-The relapse into comment in this last line (with e closing pun)
sets ofi the amoous eagerness of e water, which is conveyed
observably by the even hurry of
and made
The water which they beat to fouow faster .. . plays up t the dror in a kind of ballet ('adornings,' the verbal form,
The fluid movement of this (overflowing the line-division) is again
elt to be enhanced by the preceding succession of stressed and con-
sonantally packed monosyllables:
Which to the tune offltes kPt strke .. . Aseeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle
These three rigid-seeming stresses suggest both e oars and the strokes
which the hurrying water follows (it is, perhaps, well to say again that
there is nothing directly nd simPly mimetic-e.g', no approach to the
rhym of rowing; the suggestive process is a subtler matter).
This kind of action in e verse (if 'kind' does not misrepresent,
for ere is indefinite variety) cannot be done justice to in written
analysis. In e mature Shakespeare it is pervasive, but it can be fixed
on for convincing comment only whee the working is comparatively
simple and obvious, At the most obvious we have this:
With divers-colour'd fans, whosewind did seem
To glow the delicate cheets which they did cool,
And what they undid did'
-The'undid did,'with its repetition that is at the same time reversal,
plainly enacts the sense. But even this effect owes its full force to the
movement of the preceding three or four lines, which is not so easily
1+8
.ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA'
annotated. Here, then, is what as much as the metaphorical life makes
e difference between Shakespeare's poetry and Dryden's eloquence.*
One aspect of e difference is that Dryden's text would give little
lodgment to the commentator who finds so much to explain or
puzzle over in Shakespeare's. Not tat there would appear to be any
notble crux in the passage under examination. The Arden editor of
my old edition, however, does find a dificult one here:
Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,
So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes,
And made their bends adornings .
-Against this last line ('ths much vexed passage') there is a note
directing the reader to an appendix. Perhaps it is a long untroubled
familiarity with the passage that makes me, after reading the half-
dozen large pages of the appendix, unable to see that ny vexing was
necessary. At any rate, the obvious meaning still seems to me obviously
the intended one: the stylized deference-movements, gestures,
obeisances-ofthe attendant gendewomen as they wait upon Cleopatra
is clearly the right word for movement and action).
The lines that follow exemplify well Shakespeare's characteristic
sensuous strength;
at the helm
Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,
That yarely frame the ofice. From the barge
A strange invisible perfume hits the sense
Of e adjacent w.harfs.
* C.
\{hat you do
Still bette$ phat is done. When you speak, sweet,
I'id have lou do it ever: when you sing.
I id have you buy and sell so, so give alms,
Prav so; and, for the ordering your affairs,
:fo sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you
A wav o' the se, that you might ever do
Nothing but thatr move still, still so,
And owu no other function: each your doing,
So singular ia each particular,
Crorns rhat you are doing in the present deeds,
That all your acts are queens.
TIE ll/inter'r Tale, Acr IV, sc.iv, Lr35
t+9
r
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
-The tactual imagery of e second clause derives its strength pardy
from contrast: the hard and energetic associations of'tackle' (they are
not overtly felt as such, but are transformed, as it were, into tleir
opposite) give e adjective 'silken' a strength of sensuous evocation
that it rvould not otherwise have had. 'Tackle' here, no doubt, is
inclusive, and it is the sails that swell; so that to feel, as I have done
(and do still), that the verb makes the reader's hand grasp and compress
the silken rope was perhaps a mere private vagary. Yet the 'touches'
insist that 'tackle' (to which ey are drawn by alliteration) also
includes here what it ordinarily denotes*hands take hold of cordage,
and it seems impossible to dissociate 'swell' from the tactual effect.
The hands are made more 'flower-soft' by ttre contrasting 'yarely,'
with its suggestion of brisk seamanlike eficiency ('ay, ayl').
In the next sentence the explicit 'strange' is curiously enforced by
'invisible': we shouldn't expect visibility in a perfume, and tle
unexpected adjective (intimating, no doubt, that there was no smoke
or vapour to see) adds to the suggestion of a mysterious spell. The
contrast between 'perfume' and e associations of 'wharfs' itself 'hits
the sense,' and 'hits,' taken simultaneously with the soft suggestions
of 'perfumes,' has already an ody immediate force. The whole
phrase-
A strange invisible perone lib t,e szc
O/ tle adjauzt wlarfs
-conve),s the multitudinous impersonality of e packed masses
onlookers:
The cit,' cat
Her people out upon her . .
What follows-
and Antonn
Enthron'd i' the marhet-face, did sit alone,
Whisding to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too
And oade a gap in nature
-comes as an invitation to make e shift from considering verse as
verse to tle plane on which we discuss 'characters.'
Dryden's Antony couldn't have sat in the market-place whisding
to the air; his dignity wouldn't have permitted it, Or raer, to ask
wheer he could or not is to introduce a criterion o reality in the
r50
.ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA'
presence of which he doesn't exist. [Iis Cleopatra couldn,t have hopped
in the public street, or anywhere. His tragic prrsazae exist only-in a
world of stage-posturesi decorum gone, everything is gone. hake-
speare's have a life corresponding to the life of the vers; te life in
em is, in fact, the life of the verse. Correspondingly, his poem as
drama-in situation, Iarger rhythm, cumulative effect-s an aituality,
a richness and a depth in comparison with which it becomes absuid
to discuss Dryden's play as tragedy. It is, of course, understood that
in a sustained reading Shakespeare's poetry conveys an organization
such as cannot be examined in an extracted pasage. But the passage
-
analysed exhibits represenratively the difference frm Dryden.
About Dryden's rendering there is nothing to say except that it has
none o the poetic-and that is, we have seen, the dramatic-lie of
the original. It is accomplished verse, and verse tht lends itself to
stage-delivery, but it is hardly poetry. It is not poetry, in the sense
that it is not the product of a realizng imagination'working rom
within a deeply and minutely felt theme. Dryden is a highly;ki ed
craftsman, working at his job from the outside. The superir jtructure
wit which his play is credited as a theatre-piece is a matter of work-
manship ofthe same external order as is represented by his verse. He
aims at-symmetry, a neat and obvious design, a balancd arrangement
of heroic confrontations and 'big scenes.' The satisfaction he ofiers his
audience is that of an operatic exaltation and release from actuality, a
ballet-like completeness ofpattern, and an elegantly stylized decorum.
of It may, of course, be urged on his behalf that he does not offer a
poetic concentration comparable with Shakespeare's, but exhibits his
strength only to the moe inclusive view, in more spacious relations,
so that it is peculiarly unfair to represent him, as above, in a short
plssage. To this it must be replied that his quality is still the quality
of his verse, his virtue still a matter of taste, judgment and workman-
ship. The point may be fairly coercively made by an observation
regarding what, in Dryden's verse, takes the place of tlie life of metaphor
and imagery in Shakespeare's. What we find, when we can put a
finger on anything, is almost invariably either a ormal simile, or a
metaphor that is a simile with the'like'or the .as, left out. The choice
is so wide and the showing so uniform that illustration must be random:
He could resolve his mind, as Fire does War,
From that hard rugged Image, melt him down,
And mould him in what softe! form he pleasd.
I5I

JUDGMENT AND ANALYIS
Aad yet the Sou1, shut up in her dark Room,
Ving so clear abroad, at home sees nothing;
But, Lk a Mole in Earth, busie and blind,
Works all her folly uP and casts it outward'
To the Worlds oPen view'
the least kind word, or glance,
You give this Youth, will kindle him with Love'
Therl like a burning Vessel set adrift,
You'll send him down amain beore the wind,
To fre the Heart ofjealous Antottf'
W'ith fiery Eyes, and with contracted Brows,
He Coyn'd his Face in the severest stamp:
And fury shoot his Fabrick Iihe an narthquale;
He heav'd for vent, and burst ke bellowing Aetna,
In sounds scarce humane ..'
I frnd your Breast fenc'd round frorq humaue reach,
Transparent as a Roct ofsolid Chrystal;
Seen through, but never Pierc'd'
But I am made a shallow-forded tream,
Seen to e Botton: all m)' clea!e$ scor'd'
And all oY Faults erPos'd!
The structure, it will be seen, is always that of simple, illustrative,
point-by-point corresPondence. One analogy may give way to another'
rr,l .o grin, but the shift is always clean and obvious; there
is never
,ny .orn"pl"*i,y, confusion or amblguity. When there is development'
it is simole. lucid and rational.
This'hit of expression manifests plainly the external apProach'
the predominance of taste and judgment. It is an approach equally
app.i"nt it the treatment o emotion in what are meant to be the
eiiecially moving places-as, for instance, in the scene in whi
Octavia-and the children are loosed upon Antony:
fut0ry. Qh, Dollabea, which way shall I tuml
I 6nd a secret Yieldiug in rnY Soul;
But Cleopatra, who would die with me,
Must she be leftl Piry pleads for Octavia
But does it aot plead more for Cleopatral
[Here the Children go to him, etc'
r52
.ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA'
Vertidiat. Was even sight so motingl Emperor!
Dollaella. Frtend.
Odavia. Hltsbardl
Botl Clildrez. Fatherl
,4nlonJ. am vanquished: tahe me,
Octavia; take me, Children; share me all.
(Embracing them).
-The emotion doesn't emerge from a given situation realized in its
concrete particularity; it is stated, not presented or enacted. The
explicitness is of the kind that betrays absence of realization,
It would be unprofitable to carry e show of formal comparison
any further: the terms, it is plain, are too disparate, And it should be
plain too that we needn't take the disparateness as an excuse for the
implication thatjudgments ofcomparative value are out oplace. They
are only out of place in the sense that they should hardly need making
explicitly. But they do need making when it is urged that, though
Shakespeare's play contains fine poetry, Dryden's has a more tragic
effect. It doesn't, ofcourse, follow that, because it becomes imposible
to talk seriously about tragic effect or of'characters' in connection with
Dryden's play when Shakespeare's is placed by it, ,{ntony and Chl?atra
is among Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. In fact, there seem good
grounds for some such conclusion as A. C. Bradley came to.* Never-
theless, ntany and Cleopatra is a very great dramtic poem, and ithe
comparison with ll far Iaza is proposed it can be seriously taken up
only as an approach to Shakespeare-a way of setting off the character
of the Shakespearean genius.
It might, for instance, be an introduction to the study of Shake-
speare's imagery. Commentators on Shakespeare's text too commonly
betray a notion of metaphor that would make Dryden's practice the
standard, and one might start with the Arden editor's note on
the bellows and the fan
to cool a gipsy's lust:
'Johnson suggests to lindle and to cool, msled, by the usual use o
bellows; for which, as a cooling implement. . .'etc. It would be air
to comment here that even when Shakespeare's metaphors are most
* Crford
See Lectures an Poetry.
153
I
 JUDGMENT AND ANALYSIS
like Dryden's he cannot be counted on to exhibit e same tidines,
and at ere is no need to establi the use of bellows as a cooling
implement, It seems probable that, though Johnson's emendation h
unnecessary, he takes e meaning righdy, and at e effect here is a
mudr that of 'what ey undid did'. If that is so, hakespeare's J
metaphor is, characteristically, less simple, as well as less tidy, than
one of Dryden's.
We might en pas to one we have already considered-one that,
ough it is not more difrcult, n'e recognize immediat as not of
Dryden's kind: Four Quartets
Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can G)
Her heart inform her tongue-e swan's dowa-feaer, .BURNT NORTON'
Tat stauds upon e swell at the full oftide,
And ueither way iuclines._

'Itis not dear whether Octavia's heart is e swan's down-feather, : I hry"

swayed neier way on e full tide of emotion . . . or wheer it is
mer e inactiox o hart and tongue . . . which is mmpared to
that of dre feater,' Dryden would not have left it not clear, And
Dryden could not have evoked e appropriate drarratic feeling wi
at vividness and particularity. When we try to say in what ways
e passage is incomparably superior to anything Dryden could have
produced, v.e have to ink of metaphor as something more immediate,
I A\have
said, my commenary requires that e reader should
the text of Eliot's poetry open in front of him. Some
lu9tatrcn, however, is entailed if the critical argument is to be intel_
I
will begin by quoting the first"paragraph,i;srr"t
*-;ll:;lr,
TiDe ple;ent anil time past
Are bo perhaps present tiloe futue,
Ancl time future conained in tme past

complex and organic an neat illustrtive correspondence. And as we

Ifell time is etemally present
All time is unredeemab.
pass from l.mple to ,;rample n ./nton! and Chopatra itbecomes less
What might have been is an abstraction
and less easy to suppose at a neat line can be drawn round e study. Remaining a perpetual possibility
OoIy in a world ofspeculation.
'
'W'hat
might have beea and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present
Footfalls echo i! the nrenory
Dowu the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never openeil
fnto e rose-garden. My woids eo
Thus, ia your mind.
The first ten lines ask to be read as if, but for the metric4l movement, tl
they yele a. passage oJ discursive prose, propositional, log;cri
-t
grneral. But by te end of the paragraph * t *ot oi"ver "i tt e
theme introduced in tis discursive way is to be"o* delelopd, it will not rll'
be at e eoretical distance at seems to be promi;d.-The
;;j Itlr
'disance' is suggested by the sudden shift at line i r ; ,frin i"giri"iJ
r5+ "
r55

l,
 \

FOUR gUARTETS .BURNT NORTON'

by the voice as one reads-for one mast read poetry out, if only to I myself used the word .abstract, with the implication that it \rs to
oneself and in imagination. Wi'Footfalls echo'we have, abrupdy, be defined as the antithesis of.concrete'_an imilication
that went;ell
the immediate, concrete and personal-not the less because of the enough with my puryose in that context. If assume that,abst
compex nature ofthe immediacy, which is reinforced by the brieflast tion'is to haye its value defined by the same antithesis, afr"" rv" _r"
sentence, with te different attack (a comment on the prior consta-
-itn ,fooitr,
conclude that the function of the ientence that opens
tation being thus signalled) that it imposes on the voice, and then the js n9t all to advance the argument with an illustratiye instance,
admirably placed'Thus'. but to ftgr
brrng rn an implicit con tred ict ion _not to confirm the proposi_
The intensity of Eliot's personal engagement becomes unmistakable tion, but to demonstrate its questionabJeness. Actually, w" hrr;
mnilestation o1 tl1.1n1e1e.tf questioning
;;;; "
when we read the detached sentence that follows: of language
"*.."rr"r.
which characterizes Eliot's thinking; an awareness of which we- taie
oi,t,uing tr" aorxoolt: ;}ii :i::::1",", note in the opening sentence r"hre, as the succeeding
r"rrnr_fl
brings out, the difference in value between ,present,
I do not hnow' in i" nrri t;ir"
and 'present' in the second is essential to the thught
with the'But',
(which, p;;;g
Ifwe say that the voice must render a shift again here its metaphysical paradox, leaves all three wordi .pLr.",:, iir";--6
this time to a greater distance, we have to add that the 'distance' in 'future', necesary). And we note that wh.r",rbrt*tior,i
question is of quite another order. The poet sinks back in his chair, the. implicit questioning
i.'.;;";r;;;
as to what it portends, o, olr.rr"r, ;.,f,u."a
withdrawing for a moment from what has become for us his total by 'possibility' an d 'speculation.. 'Footfall" echo in
immersion in a personal problem, but it is not a withdrawal that
the me;;n+;;;,
-ihe
speculation? no sreps were taken down the pa.'.xqq,
lessens the immediacy. On the contrary, it intensifies the immediacy -Though
echorng oottalls certainly present emselves as actual_*irich
is mor.
in a way that makes us feel it as an inorming life that makes the than merely 'possible', and the deuched
paragraph organic from te beginning. The question, in fact, as to
how such discursive passages as the first ten lines have been made
poetry is answered. W'e note that the sudden change at 'Footfalls' is Th,,, in ),ouyjildo'd' ""ho
not felt as a break in the continuity. That it wasn't even at first reading
has the effectof establi"hing an unquesrionecl reality.
isexplained when we observe how inevitably it was for us an illustrative
case in point continuing the abstract argument. The abstractness of
This last word ha. hoveied over the text as the one that Doinrs t
the nature of e poet's preoccupation, a preoccupation ;hi.:lr,
tle propositional passage, we are now able to tell ourselves, is an ;r-;"
aovance th rough the poem, we find ourselves describinE
ingredient in the inclusive concreteness of a creatively presented as exoloratorv_
creative, Though the word ,reality' doesn,t y., u.,ully
experience. The 'thought' as something abstract and general-some- ,ip.tr; ;"
positive purpose, the directing nisus, makes it.elf
thing capable of re-phrasing and re-statement-is most certainly not fclt in thl'ooenino
paragraph. That subtly creative er ocation ofa rcally
more important than the actul thinking, the inking quality and real which legini
here entails an associated de-realizing process, and whrt
force of which relate essentially, in terms of the total significance, to is the paragrph
being impelled by a personal need and directed by an imperative
does isto undermine the autho.itliof Newtonian ?;i;;
personal concern.
common-sense "I".k_ti;;
yersion-tiat which takes its paterian form in the
'Conclusion' to tTte Renaissance volume:
The need and the concern are tere, we recognize, even in the
opening logical sequence of ostensibly impersonal propositions; they goes a srep farthcr srill, and assures us rhat
thoqe impressions
are there in the 'unredeemable' and the 'what might have been': ot-Analysis
the lrdividual rnind to rvhich. for ea.h one of us, experience
u indles
What might have been is an abstraction down, are .in perpcrual ighr; that each one of rhem s jimited
bv time-
and that as time is in6niteJy dirisiblc, each ofrhem is
Remaining a perpetual PosibiiitY i"nri"f" i"lriU
Only in a world of sPeculation. also, all at is actul in .it being a singie momenq gone whtle we try
ro
r56 57

)
 _-I
FOUR OUARTET .BURNT
NORTON,
apprehend it, ofwhich it tray ever be mole truly said that it has ceased meanings and meaning as actual music
doesn,t, Its invention represents
to be than that it is. To such a fiemulous wisp . . . what is leal in our Eliot's need to ur.
lie 6nes itselfdown. -ry u-il th" ."
co u rdn.t do,r, r
".r,i""
tnnocence, and, in fact.
r.g'?]i:iliill: *
rTs[:i,,1-r:lrft
t:"'"t. ,x;.
The creative nisus manifests itself positively in 'memory'. The in all ih" manrrestations ^"i,-l
-,.;r*,.-;^-'^ of his creative o-rigi-
not taken, and the rose-garden remains an ahnung, but the il#l;',tt
*ri,y, rr" i*prlli,rn
passage was
*,i#;i;;;;;i;;i""';;ii:i'?0n".:l,l#::llti:,:',ffi
effect ofthe later part ofthe paragraph is to have made the 'possibility'
something more than theoretical-something of which we may aspire
the passage beginnins . Footfas ccho,
:,h. ;i ilill.p:';;;",,
i;
the.reader's perceiving rhe illogicality,
to achieve a concrete apprehension. This last clause-in fact e whole
ready for what, follow'ng, will
,ra #'neli"r,,[,: b"
sentence-would look odd if examined with analytic rigour. But to irrng the point of it home to him_will
enable him to reatize fu'iv the p"riit.
say that nevertheless it is justified, some such use of language being pt;y;l;;;;;t;;.
':,^-:::'J:' [I,;,oI,'n,,
compelled by the effort to initiate intelligent commentary on the text,
when habituatecl to the .m usical'.,ro,,,;;'t'; ':."t- ":
is to pay a tribute to Eliot's creative resource in making language serye
. r ..p1,T+ill"ilH:,%':1..#;expect thecontradicuon

him in a basic exploration of experience.

rr goes wrth thls that he is nrepared for frequent abrupt transitions
of a kind disconcertjns to anv.,.1s who
The status in relation to common-sense actuality of what is with feels he has a rigirt to require
some familiar form ofontin,ir,.
such compelling realness 'remembered' in the 'memory' is elusive, but Actually, ocourse, th organiza,tion
is ctose and de)icate, the r.t.uc.
we respond with an implicitly endorsing positiveness to the evoking. rf ;;;-;.;;;iirilijiii,,"
And a memory, we tell ourcelves, prompted by the opening proposi-
" ,Music. is
neighbours subtle, esscntial arrrl orcgn2n1.
takes to defy. the criteria we i-pri."itty the licence Eliot
tional part of the paragraph, is both past and present-it is here and
can remonably say) all forms of w.itien gngUrt
*p..ii" *
i*.Jia "r","Il
now, but'we cannot say where', At the same time, without qualifying _.".tuirfy
'ar, lfi.fol,.o
at offer us a sustained development ,i"rgl.,.
the essential potency for thought of that reallzaton, we recognize that ,;;,;;.,
the given memory is of a very odd kind: what is remembered didnnt ?:l"" ry*: us brri""frnj;i'goro;;;" ;"';".
assurance ^thought,searching,
n the first
take place. The effect o the recognition is to prime and sensitize our ten lines o.urnt N;r;";i w"l;;.,';;;:r,
see the licence as an extreme
attention for what is to follow-for we know that the force or'value' exactingness, ;.p"*a ,"-,fr. p".,,Uy
the personal urgency o[his thorght.
of the this and that we take note of depends on a total context that
validity,. and orr ,.ns. of this'as
ar"tho;g;;:;il; ; , H:;,
hasn't yet been established. Tentatively we may wonder wheer it is
just regret that is registered in 'What might have been'. The'un- acquiescing response. But Lqurcscence'
acquies as "";r"J.*iir"u".r';;,:.".j;::"
I have
noted' is commonly
q"in.a iy:y.i, ir;,!uL
redeemable' that precedes it suggests guilt too, or at any rate something
What I- have said amounts to saying
that is to be expiated.
^ that the .music, of Iaar
Qua.rte.ts challenges a criterion thr i."not
this point we must recll that when D. W. Harding discussed
At esuivalent in the etd of total *"i1i,s.{g
lrgl., ;;;';:;"
'Burnt Norton'* it stood alone, with no hint of intimately related inrelligent self-exposure to the poetry,
*1."ii;#l'i: i;i
other 'quartets' to follow. Nor was the description 'quartet' offered and it will not rhen be capabre
ot anything Iike precise defrntion.
the reader for the poem itself. The musical analogy made explicit in
whatit
rr. .*._lrri"rl;;f;J.:,;,
is.faces the reader, if in a peculiarly
the ttle, Four Quartets, has a marked felicity, and prompts the com-
mentator on the co-present four to reflections that yield him light for "_^.,i;;'i;,.-]';;;;;
"f::^T1:f".h^lt"nge faced by the critic oaI *rr"i. .r."if ,"',^,.ri
s we mov orward through.Burrt
an intelligent reading. This 'music' works with language, and so wi Norton,(and
rng an ideal reading wilt hive
been p*..a. "nyt;r;r;;;_
ti"ffiil:. [r*;
i tl 'ryil-, end-''in my beginning i,
I refer to his me(lorable characterization ofthe poem io .rzrirl Vol' V No. z
(Septenber, 1936), 'Here most obviously the poetry is a linguistic achievemeDt,
["-,li]," ':k; of life that d"t"1mlnq5l5s
tntrrnstc prrnciple -;;;l;,':i;'r";
That. question is clearly nseparable
,1,Lr*, f ,ii, _rri.il
in this case an achievement irl the creatioa ofconeepts, . . . One could say, perhaps, fr"* ,fr" qr"r,r;";irffi;;,
D! wtt.ot
that the poem tkes the place of the ideae of "rcgret" and "eterDity". . . .' criteria shall we arriye ai the essenrial
.ri,i*i;
r58
r59
"a!^"",ri'
:-- w
.BURNT NORTON,
FOUR OUARTETS
W'e can't doubt that Eliot's creative purpose, dictated by his
ff we saw the srst sentence by iself, insulated, we should read it
as if it were general statement, and distant'. But te ey" of ifr"."rL,
desperate inner need, goes with a marked intensity of consciousness'
sees forward; we take simultaneously the sharp prac,if
W mustn't, though, ientify the conscious with the creative Purpose ou"rii* una
the urgent 'Quick', and know tht we tr"ve
in its totality. Th degree in which he can hold in conscious appre'
presented immediate s unquestionable as
-ou.d ;k irr;; .
hension te"end' of hi ahnuxg must obviously fall short of complete-
ness. He mav verv well form imperfect and misleading conceptions
of
him, and be temPted to move My words echo
e nature f th n""d that drives
Thus.
towards kinds of satisfaction which the reader who truly honours
hi* *ittt the attention he demands has to judge adversely-kinds of The diEerence is that this immediacy imposes decision and instant
satisfaction at odds with the profound human need e poem actually action-action as a result owhich we fid ourselves rz
the r;r;_nr.d"".
qe givgn no account,
reveals. lv.e narrative, dramatic or dir"urri;;, ;;';;*
Awarenes of such possibilities is a necessary qualification for is changed relation to the rose-garden has l"rn l..rehirbu,.
i{r.
intelligent reading and judgment where n enterPrise like lioCs in do we ask for one, for the ,musicl i.p*.. i""ii
...?';#.;;.
Foar'Ouartets is'in qr"stioi". The explorations it proposes for itself its autho"rity. We perceive by now tht e musical
orgr.i*ii"i i. ,
mean llunging deep into regions ofthe equivocal, and the-delicacies of meafls oi developing, in_ e exploratory_creative
way, tf,e significance
,pp."h"n.i, rd divination-, an ,pm.ts io. which qualies Eliot for o 'memory. I hrs-ts a key_word for Eliot; we note how goes
'ecno', and. we shajl soon it with
,h n*.*pt, nece"sarily involve spicial hazards and temPtations-' have noted other associated words, in .Burnt
We have to consid.r now th; long paragraph that concludes e Norton' he-invokes our experience ofthe creativeness
of *".rr,lrO
first movement-e paragraph at begins with rr" to our knowledge that creativeness isnt necelmrily
_1:y,
,g_'_t-"-.-
Irresponslble.
Oer echoes
.rose-garden,
Inhabit the garden. . The living core of e memory whch recurs so
significandy in.Eazr euartets,belngs to early chiihood_..
Between this and the evoction of the footfalls there is only e r, nrr.
in The Famig Reinion, re ting *ith r;y;;;
sentence in which the poet draws back from the immediacyof 'memory', ljil*': Yiry
cfilronood. days, says
and the rose-garden i".o*". only a bowl of dusty rose'leaves' The
withdrawal 1rihi"i,, *" note, is into an actual Present at. is-to the you bring me news
poet rnd ur-les vividly present than the remembered past) serves to Ofa_door that opens at the end ofa corridor,
set off the eturn to voked immediacy which, in its significant Suoght and singing.
compellingness, is not"
that o present actuality l say.az. immeacy'
The peculiar felicity_that lies at the end of the corridor (which
because th]s time, while again all 'distance' has been eliminated, what bo
is present to us is differt in quality and status- (in..th.is region of
ooes and d.oesnot belong to childhood) plays its part in defining his
'regretn:
there are no words to hand for essential distinctions-we
"*olo.rtion
have to do, analogically, e best we can with the words there are),
The bright colour fades
ancl the diilerenc we perceive, has the closest bearing on tlle im- Togetber with the unrecapturablJemorion,
portance 'memory' has for Eliot's thought- Te gJow upon the world tbat never foun its object.
' His gift with Inguage appears in the way the paragraph opens:
Ofcours_e, there is more than regret here; a sense
Other echoes ofailure (,unredeem_
abte'),-o somerhing to be expiated, is registered
Inhabit e garden. Sha we follorl ! in the .never found its
6nd them, obJect'..'l here is a good deal more than at to be said
Quick, said the bird, flnd tbem' about Harry.s
case, which has the most intimate bearing
Round the coroer, on Eliot.s. But I *i k;1,;
t6o 16t

I

FOUR gUARTETS
too at
now to the text in front of us. We can say of 'Burnt-Norton'
poem' ls not a
the'regret'. the word for something at the core ot the
glow upon the world'-a regret or the lost
-"r" ^,,", of 'the losti.iot to L" recovered' The remembered'first
."""iiJ r*th"t
;;d''l;;;r there in the evoked 'rose-garden" a Ptent and
ot"r"n""l but the 'rose-garden' experience as actually- com-
".r""ii"i
r""'Ji. doesn't offir to be, just an evocation of .what
"".,'rnd
belonss to childhood. Memory has done its creative work' and that
;;;i;U .or,."r.,.d itself wi significances that are outside the
range of childhood aPPrehension.
And the lotos rose, quietlY, quiedl,
The surface gttered out of hearr oflight
of'the first world"
-of that, if ofiered it as e recovered sensibility
*e rho,rid have to say that it presented the inescapable equivocalness
ofthl adult recall. Eliot himseif (for it is unmistakable Eliotic poetry)
L.i*r ,lrr, he is doomed, or privileged, or bo, to write as an adult
ancl is highly conscious that a 'way of puning' it is
more than merely
that. Hey not have been aware that in writing
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the loseg
Had the look of flowers that are looked at
.BURNT NORTON'
'Reality', that is, serves perhaps better an 'eternity'as an index of
the preoccupation that explains the peculiarity, the 'music', of 'Burnt
Norton',
'Regret', the other of the pair of terms I quoted in opening this
inquiry, points to what is for us a closely asociated subordinate theme.
Implicated as it is in the considerations that focus on 'reality', it has
its part in one's account of what the latter preoccupation portends-
what basic attitude, wht sense of human life, what nerve-centre of
valuation. The hints we receive in 'unredeemable' nd 'what might
have been' don't, after all, signify repining over either the loss o that
enchanted childhood felicity or failure to take the pasage and open
the door into the rose-garden we have just revisited (for, n a wzy
made familiar by the Eliotic music, it both is, and is not, 'our first
world'-is not, because the intimadons with which it
is alive are
inseparable from an adult apprehension of signicances). The 'regret'
(though we emerge knowing that we need another word) is there with
us in the garden. It is there in the past tense, and in the elusiveness,
the unseizablenes, that Eliot's genius in using the English language
as he develops his music renders so marvellously. He renders the
paradox of it: this is not a mere gleam of the rose-garden; it is a firm
apprehension.
That is intimated in the short opening sentence-

he was recalling Mallarm,r but he was profoundly conscious

ofbeing Other echoes
, t igt ty .opt ir."i*ted poet who owed a 'practitioner's' debt to French Inhabit the garden
,o",? oi,n U"t nineieenth century' The indisputab)e proof that the
conr.iou, and transmuting adult preoccupation informs memory
rn -which I describeds, t first glance, comparatively 'distant' statement.
this recall of the 'first *or1d' pr"r.,,tt iself in e summing-up
when With what firm certainty the garden is'there', inhabited by'echoes'
(already a potent word), is established by the instantly following'Shall
the cloud has Pased:
we ollow?'-an incitement to prompt and purposeful action. 'The
Go, said the bird' for the leaves were full of children' deception of the thrush' (which phrase completes the question)
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter' conveys the elusiveness of the sought reality, which is not an actuality
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind of the common-sense world. When, by an immediate transition, which
Cannot bear verY ouch reatY' (as in dreams) we accept unquestioningly, we find ourselves jz the
gives us the garden, there is a change of tense to the past-which is not just the
Atlast we get the word itself, 'reality'-the word that
it trs the nature of,the past of'our first world', though the garden is one we know: this past,
.rirt"i .i" arr. quest, though dosn't give
to that' familiar in continually creative memory, is again a present past. With a
upshot, goal o. un.*i.i it takes the whole complex work do
dreamlike acceptingness we both are, and, almost explicitly after the
oieur jardins relt ?at les leut cloud passes, are za children (they are hidden with the 'unheard
'Rien, ni les
Ne rtiexdra ce coetr music' in the shrubbery):
'Brise Marine'.

,62 163
 .BURNT NORTON'
FOUR gUARTETS
pondingly sharpened and sensitized attention in the reading of what
Go, said e bird, for the leaves were full of childreo'
Hidden ercitey, containing laughter' comes after,
Go, go, go, said the bird: bumao kind The second movement opens with fifteen lines at call for little
Cannot bear verY much realitY' commenti what they are there for is plain enough. They give us an
antithesis to the opening ten lines of the first movemnt. Instead of
The'eo'and'Then cloud passed'are hardly distinguishable-in our e abstract, discursive and propositional, we have an evocation, non-
sense of ihem-which is a sense of their signifrcance'
The signihcance' logical and directionless, of the disordered, distracting, ought-
given in 'Cannot bear very much reality' involves' Paradoxlcally' a bafling confusion we actually live in. For 'actually' I had almost
paradox betng
.'rssestior, of failure on part of human kind, the put 'immediately', but hesitated; Eliot has brought home to us te
in 'w]rai
,lr77i'r*i lri rrAr' PJainl'y, the'regret' intimated Tig,ht
ot sln' I lre
equivocalness of 'abstract', 'concrete' and 'immediate" In this evoked
have been'is not mrely regret, but guilt tooi it is.a sense immediacy thought has played its part, and can't be said to be not
movement closes with a lzriation on e opentng
ltnes: present:

tine futurc The dance along the atterY

Time Past and. ifhe circulation of the lymPh
What might have been and what has been
Are 6gured in the drift ofstars
Point to one elil which is always present'
scend to summer in the tree
'We
present'.an move above the moving tree
The 'end' is there in the implicit 'ought', which is always In ght upon the 6gured Ieaf - .
to-[Ie'
imperative that gives (it is hoped) direction.and signlhcnce
Te 'realitv' oi*hi"h there were elusive intimations in
the rose- The challenging senstous mlange of the start suggests once more an
rJ* *lJ,i-r" itlu"ttion to achieve a firm apprehension 'echo' of Mallarm:
irr.r.. ,.rJ,l""*"oi"d
uria;). wi*out the firm apprehension. there.can't
iIffi:#;f .rr." n.""*"y for asuaglment-for liberation' I
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.*
sav 'kind of acceptnce' because it is in Eliot's attitude towards tne
ilr""'.*rrrrri
-'ffiffio. *i,*v find it discussibly ch atacterized ' The essentially relevant antithesis is to be seen in what the next
ti;", oi,r,1, "*p"tt'o
n,it **"ment we are primed and alerted paragraph introduces:
f".";; ; ;'f;i;. Th" p,o"",' of evocative denitio, tlat is. to At the still poilt ofthe tudng vorld. Nether flesh nor fleshless;
i;;r; ;;;il;.*"thi.,g suf;Eciently there' for even tentative appraisal Neither from nor to\,!.ards; at the still point, there the dance is,
^. onlu b.sun, plalnly entails subtle complexities ofdevelopmenr' But neither arrest nor moveDret. And do not call it ty,
"nd ouiselves that e implicit appeal for our
corro-
n* *J."n'r. r., tll Where past and future are gaered. Neier rooveoent froo nor
lor"aio" i. challenge to e profoundest responsibility of Judgment' towards,
n-ri *i." t"tponri-bili,y *,y "otptl us to reserves andquestionings' Neither ascent nor decne. Except for the point, e still point,
and even to a'I'io'.And i had better say at once that eariy in my own There rvould bc no dance, and there is only the dance.
*r,r, F)ur Qurtets as a ompleted work I experienced I can orly san tere we ha..,e L,een] but I cannot sal where'
".""*
a decided arrest at
And. I cannot sal, how long, or that is to place it in time-

human tind
This is not propositional and discursive in the way of e ten lines
Yery Euch ealitY' with which 'Burnt }orton'opens; but it does, like the earlier passage,
Cnnot bear
' cf. Le tem?le enselreli d;,ulgue \ar la baucie
divinins that this was an intimation of something basic
in Eliot's Silulcrale d'g\ t b,1,L,at1t boue et rubi
a corres-
?r,a*"F ahrt I couldn't endorse' Such a reaction means
'Le Tombeau de Charles Batrdelaire'.

16+ s

I
 _-_--------

FOUR QUARTETS .BURNT NORTON,

appeal to the logically thinking intelligence. 'At tho still point of the at the still point, there the dance is,
turning world', in its yerblessly constating way, is more than statement: But neither arrest nor qovement.
it carries e implication that no one can not recognize and endorse
the perception that is evoked; for constatation here is erocation-of Then, two lines further on, we haye:
an illuminatingly 'abstract' kind. We all of us remember to have
Except for the point, the stili point,
registered the perception repeatedly; some of us from the early days There would be no dance, and ther" L onfy
when we used to watch, from above, the spinning flat round of the "'Jo.".
wooden top we were whipping. At this end ofthe diameter it is going Dance s moving pattern, and .pattcrn, has appeared just
away from usi at that, it is coming towards us. In between, at the the close ofthe opening paragraph Jqr! before.
vervrr, in
of,t. ,nor"il"nr,
centre, there is'neither from nor to$'ards'-there is'the still point',
But could it be still, seeing that the top in its wholeness is spinning? We move above the moving tree
At any rate, do not call it fixity. In ligt upon the dgured lf
And hear upon tle sodden 6oor
Between the potent first phrase of the paragraph (the phrase ends
Below, tire boarhound ald the boar
with a full-stop) and'Ncither from nor towards', there comes'Neither pursue their pattern
as before
fiesh nor fleshless', which is a prompting, or incitement, of a different
But reconciled among the stars.
order from the two that enclose it-and to which enclosure it owes its
power of suggestive implication. The implication is that the analogy The word .pattern, had come nce before that_in
thc long closing
of'the still point' has a force ('Neither from nor towards') that inheres paragraph of the first movement
equally in'Neither flesh nor fleshless'. Since this phrase pretty obviously
There they were as our guest<t acccpted and acceDtins.
conye) an intention in keeping with the ahnung and the nisus that
so we movcd, ard they, in a formal pittern,
we register as giving us the informing preoccupation of Eliot's'music',
AJong thc empry al.lcy, inro rhe bor iirclc,
his creative commitment, we don't find ourselves (though we shall To loo} doryn into the drained pool.
watch where it leads and what company it keeps) objecting to the
procd. Nor do we when he extends it to time in the way that led fn both. these places the pattern is one of movement,
and the
Harding, in his review, to speak of'Burnt Norton' as creating the 'dance' has been given us a few lines before ,the -"'
"'' word
,;ii ;ir;:,
concept of eternity.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
And do not call it 6rity,
Are gured in the drift ofitars
Where past and uture are gathered. Neither movement
Ascend to summer in the tree. . . .
from nor towatds,
Neither ascent nor decline. My remark that in the sensuc
l:::;:ro i; ; ;i ; ; ^",,"i'ii'1.'oll,i*. iiilJ,'Ji:X;,',",-#i[' ,}:
The intrinsically compelling virtue resides in 'the still point'; the n5,1'5 De raKen up aaln ln the commenrary invited by
ih" p"rarn
'musical' cogency of e development is a persuasive use ofthat, which, from which I have harkcd back. fnu, prr.ug" i.frf,
both clear in itself and pregnatlt, remains unquestioned. We respond it lies behind all the appearance, of
*]"'irl
.;;;'fr;#,..ffi
ir,t.?.,' f;
tentatively, knowing that the music will continue developing the
i-.^T"_ -iid
they
,come
"; ;;"","
ag.rin and ugain, in diferent
il; j;
complex creative argument through four quartets. rnsrnce berng,tlre penulrimatc paragraph
of .Little Giddirg.. Ei;;r
Immediately we note that in the second Iine of the paragraph rounct rne words pcculiarly congcnial to
his thought and to th nature
another theme, or major lluminative idea, has been brought into the ur nre rea.surlrg epprehen.ion it aimcd at achieving_thc
nn apore_
hension of the ,end, (his ,beginning'). They
music: ," *"?a, ,i, piryJi'r""
t66 167

a
 IOUR PUARTETS
impotant part in the rclevarrt avant garde thinking when Eliot was,
wheer in full consciousness or not doesn't matter, equipping himself
to write Four Quartetr. Let the reader tuln up R. G. Collingwood's
The ldea of Nature (it is to be had in 'Oxford Paperbaclc') and, in
Part III, look rough the second chapter, paying special attention to
section 3: 'The new theory of matter'- Collingwood, of course, was
not a physicist, but a philosopher, one concerned to describe non-
technically e new concepts entailed by the revolution in physics
that tooh place in e rgzos, and to suggest the consequences for
intelligent non-technical thought about the nature of the real.
Consider then this, which I quote meely in order to enforce my
point that the whole context provided by Collingwood's chapter bears
illuminatingly on the contemporaneity, in its originality, of Eliot's
ought-thought at is his effort to assuage a characteristically
modern unease.
Thus we get back to a single physical unit, the electron; but we also
get averl i.rportant Eew conceptiolr of chemical quality as depend.ing
;ot upon the merely quantitative aspect of the atoo, its rveight, but
upon e pattern formed by the electrons that comPose it. This pattern
iota static pattem but a dynamic pattem, a pttem constatl/ changing
n a defrnite rthmical way, like the rhlthmicat Pattems discovered by
Pythagoras in ttre 6eld ofacoustics.
My point is not that Eliot read Collingwood, whose book didn't
come out till 1945 (ough the lectures were given in t934-3.
Nor is it that the ahnung of the really real that, in his heuristic-
creative vay, he offers, in making it communicable, to develop and
con6rm or himselfcould conceivably have been derived from Colling-
wood. Indeed, prompted by the last line of the movement I am
examining-
Only through time time is conquered
-I think of invoking Collingwood when it comes, as it must, to
explaining why and how Eliot's 'reality' doesn't at ali recommend
itself to me (to be made to say is being, let me add, to have incurred
a debt).
At the rnoment, f
note how intimately Eliot associates the'Patten',
or'dance', with 'the still point': 'at the still Point, there the dance is'.
Neier the association, nor the 'dance' itself, has the cler intrinsic
force of meaning that makes 'At the still point o the turning world'
r68
.BURNT NORTON'
so obviously basic for the poet's business of eyocatiye definition and
'musical' development, His 'musical' logic in any case exacts the closest
and most sensitiye attention we can achieye and sustain. And, looking
aead beyond the point at which I stopped (,for that is to place it in
time'), we perceive that immediately there is a significant md,,lation,
shift into the decidedly personal-not the less decidedly and signi-
cantly personal because te 'I' disappears:
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
Te release from action and sufr'ering, release iom the inne!
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace ofsense, a rvhite light stili and moving.
The 'pressure of urgent misery and sel-disgust' (to quote a phrse
from D. W. Harding) asserts itself plainly here, ancl at ihe same time,
wi the'yet', the specifically religious nature ofthe intention becomes
ex?licit in 'a grace of sense'. This 'grace' is the ,white light, which,
described as 'still and moving', associates itsel unmistakabfy with .the
still point'. We can hardly say'identifies itself,; the associat'ion is not-
at a,,y rate as yet-inevitable or compelling enough. But we remember
that when, in the first movement,
we moved, and then in a ormal pattern,
Along the empty allen into the box circle,
To look down iuto the drained oool
the pool became, or had become
lled o-ith water out ofsunlight,
And the lotos rose, quiedy, quied5
The surface gttered out ofheart oflight.
'Pattern'at its first introduction comes in as belonging to the rosc.
garden, and associated with a transcendent reality. The deprecatory
comment on the effect ('the pool was dry') ofthe cloud,s passing makes
that er2licit and the 'hean of light' out of which the surace glittered
is suficiently identiable wi tire 'white light still and moviig,. yet
we are faced with questions about the significance o the .danci,. and
the relation of e 'dance' to 'rl-. still poinr', rhat we rn.t at this
stge answer to our satisfaction. Before r,r,c eo further it will be il.ell,
since Four Quartets demands, and repays, rjre most intclligent attention
we can give, to sharpen our sense o those questious, The best way
t69
I

FOJR QUARTETS
of doing tht that occus to me is to consider how Harding explains
Eliot's insistent preoccupation with 'Pattern' in discussing the last of
the quartets.
His criticism of Eliot's petry is t be found in Experience into
Words.* | refer to it in this way because it seems to me to yield
more profit than any other I know of' That is not to say that I agree
with itt I have found it helpful because of the way in which it has
challenged profrtable dissent, so being for me the means of clarifying
and defining my own perceptions and judgments. Emphasizing the
importance of the idea of 'pattern' in Eliot's communication he says
(page t4) of 'Little Gidding':
The nal section develops the idea that every experience is integrated
with all theothers, so that the fulness of exploration means a leturn,
wi better u[derstanding, to the point where you started . of the quality of the happiness the closing sentence imputcs to Eliot.
The t/rany of sequence and duration in life is thus reduced. Time-
processes are vierved as asPects of a Pattern which can be grasped-in its
entirety at any one of its moments ' One erect ofttris vierv of time
and experiencc is to rob the mornent of death ofany over-signiEcance
we may have given it. For the humanist of Section II life trails of just
because it can't manage to endure, For the man convinced of spiritual
values fe is a coherent pattern in which the ending has its due place,
and, because it is part of a Pattem, itself leads into the beginning. An
ove!-strong terro! of death is often one erpression of the fear of living'
or death is one ofthe li-processes that seem too terrifying to be borne'
In exaoining one means ofbecoming reconciled to death, Mr Eliot can
show us life too made bearable, unfrightening, positively inviting:
With the drawing ofthis Love and the voice of this Calling
'W'e
shall not cease from etploration
And the end ofall our exPloring
'Will be to arrive where we starteil
And hnow the place for the rst time.
Here is the clearest exPresion of motive force other than repulsion'
Its dominance makes this poem-to Put it ver/ simPly-far haPPier thn
most of Mr Eiiot'.
Harding of course has more to say, but this quotation, made.for my
prrpot", ir, I think, a fair one. I shall return to consider his com-
*",,tuty on'Littlc Gidding' later, as an aid to formulating my own
comprehensive judgment on the whole undertaking of the poem,
+ London, Chatto & Windus, 1963.
r70
rt
,BURNT NORTON'
Foar Quartets, For it is one poem, and, if we are arvare ofa significant
difference when we come to'Little Gidding', the signiicance bears
decisively on our understanding of the earlier quartets. Whatever
developmer.rt we may detect, thcre is nothing to make Hardine's way
of referring to'pttern' uniiluminating in respect o'Burnt Norton'
(though it is not adequate to explaining the part played by'pattern'
in the 'music').
I don't ur.rsay this ontention when I remark that I have left a
question-mark in the marein against the last two sentenccs ofHarding's
that I quote. My query doesn't regard the justness of the statement
that in 'Little Gidding' we have the clearest expression in Eliot's
poetry ofa motive orce other than repulsion. It portends disagreement
with Harding about the nature of the moti!'e foce, and a questioning
What I agrcc with !{arrling about, valuing his corroboration the
more because he is (I think) something like a *,holly sympathetic critic
of Eliot as I mysel am not, is the Iarge part played in his poetry in
general by the motive orce of repulsion. I will quote from Harding
one sentence more, He says about the passage of unrimed terza rima
in 'Little Gidding':
The verse in this narrative passage, rvith its regular measure and
insistent alliteration, sc efective for combiring the macabre u,ith the
urbane and dreary, is a t'ay to inCicate and a \ray to conttol thc pressure
of urgent misery and scldisgust.
'The pressure of urgent misery and self-disgust' dcscribes admirably
e motive force that Harding, rightty (i rhink), juilgc. to harr
impelled Eliot to creativity. it is obviously not a bafling paradox, but
it faces us with more disturbing compiexities, and raises more questions!
than Harding seems to realize. And it is not merely in regard to'Little
Gidding'; the questions clearly concern us rvhen we are trying to
achieve an intelligent reading of'Burnt Norton'. By Eliot,s own
implicit avowal, 'Little Gidcling' derives an essential measure of the
authority to which (whcther or not hc lrould have cndorsed that word),
of its nature, it lays claim from the creative work that has been done
in the preceding quartets.
W'hen we turn back, then, to 'Burnt Norton'from Harding's
explanation of'pattern'and the part it plal's in Elior's crcative treatnrent
of the basic problems as he has experienced thern and met them, we
nd that we have been primed to ask several questions that should be
17r
,* I
 FOUR PUARTETS ,BURNT NORTON,
active in our attention as we go forward through the poem. There
11tem
in *lbl ending has,its due place, and, because it is part
czn be no questioning of the asumption that Eliot's interest in the ot a pattern, itself-,!r"
leads into the oegrnnrng.
problems is not merely intellectual and theoreticl but, in an intense i1 o1ly. a summa'i, and"that there are other
and imperative way, personal. But 'personal' has different orces. ,-91^Y::::,,:
rnar need sayrng is obvious. And it is
thinss
helpful in the readinq of.Fazr
Harding, with good reason, lays great stres on repulsion as, in e Uuartet to be reminded at this stage, between which .Littl"
greater part of Eliot's work, a major, if not the dominant, motive
force behind his creativity, and seems to assume that is is so normal,
9l11l"g' rs *:* "n"d
are such complexiueiof a.vetofrr,"n;;; ;;;",1.,.*
l9."1.y ], to. be able ro say more. It.dance.
Llrot the rnsisted-on
is clear, for instance, that for
so humanly inevitable or central, as to need no discusing-as to call, association of the with .the stll point, is
from the critic, for nothing but te ccepting constatation. But is that of and to,r,",r"r"*";1.".;.
a tenable attitudel Certainly it would seem to have the endorsement i?:::::.,1,:1 ;|: lgnincance
rrarorng s '-tor the man .,pattern,
conyinced of spiritual values, in itself tells
oEliot's own. It is surely not the less true, however, tltat the question When I *"ti"u";;;.;;."
mysetf say, as I migti u".y
1:.ltothing.
is one tlat ought to be intensely, and, in the face oe difficulty-and tnts at a ttart, that Eliot,s reality is clearly
ipiritual, I haven,t said
the spell-of Eliot's 'music', pertinaciously, alive in our minds as we enough to suggest anything like aequa,"
" ou;;;;
read. If we should decide, by such criteria as every serious critic has, cnalenge us. It would have been the preface-1,.,o ,o ti",
to an expianation, if I
under the stimulus of a given work (which may not prove wholly Eliot mcans by .Except for *.
p";,,'rf* ,iiti'p"irr,
slmpathique even in his ultimate judgment), to evoke as vividly and Pl^T:l.t,yl,*
r nere woutd be no dance'; but I hadn't
one to give. His undertakin.
responsibly as he can in reading it, that the repulsion, far rom being we cn see, is of its nature so dificult, ,"a ,*r.lot; _.itro,
i;,
humanly inevitable, has something wrong about it, the way in which of such a kind, that we on't expe*,. U. *,ylvirl
we take 'pattem' in Four Quartets would be adversely affected. We :.::::f:9:qry,
sa styrng explanarjons at every point in a quartet
as we move
might still agree that Harding's account ofthe kind ofsatisfaction that rr ls we , then, to remind ourselves, and to be reminded, foiward.
that ere
determines Eliot's insistence on the theme was, as far as it goes, 4r, questions that, if we were attending duly to
the ,musicl *" ,fr."fa
sound, but we should be committed to a limiting and qualifying judg- have to. ask-questions t \.yhich *"
ment on te poem-in relation, that is, to the implicit claim to a we oughr, ultimately, to find answers.
,i'ould b" ,;grrii" iiri.iiliii",
general validity and human centrality. I.t is partly a compliment to the poet t say
that or the first few
Furter, we must rom now on advance with a sharpened vigilance F*,
Auartets we may remain undiiturbed by ary ;;;;;i.g
for the signs that may tell us something about the relation between :::di."F: ?:
sense ot unanswered questions_so obviously does the ,music,' transcend
Eliot's specifrc genius and his sense o( his attitude towards, the human praptl rases, ye,r so persu.rsive is it in the impression
.and of intellectual
creativity which at genius, a poet's, represents-for so potent a masrery tt grves. Nevertheless the obligation
rests on us to arrive, in
'dominance' of repulsion is a curious trait. The manifestation of te .
l"]lli:, wrth the offer of e poem, at a giounded juag**,
,i,"i,. i""
'pressure ofurgent misery and self-disgust' that Harding species in e artrcutzte convicrion and clarity and that nta-ils the measure
passage I have quoted in reference to 'pattern' is 'an oyer-strong terror understanding enabling one, in face .Exceot - of
"
isay) of f.. ,f,"-
of death'. Ifall the daringly inventive complexity ofprard we have there would be no dance', to formului. th.
q*ri;"r, "^;,ir
met with already was necessry to the generating of the pregnant convic tiorr. in teJ Iigent nswers (which, ""J i";'*iih
affirmation at which we have halted-
one .f,rlJ i.ii
very well rnvole critici"m of one kind or another_which
;;5;,;j;;,
*uld"b"
tentatiye).
Except for the point, the still point,
(since, as I have said, no one would suppose
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance 91.?1"" himself
for a sounrl appraising .r;iri" ot ni
;;;;;; i;';';;;,
-there would be an effect of disparity when we read, as an exegetical readrng-or a sccond or third), I read rrow
-q-u-1]6ed
with a-sen.e of what i,
comment on the force of'dance' (or 'pattern'), such a statement as comrng, and.L know my mind abour the
complered poem. .fhe
this; 'For the man convinced of spiritual values life is a coherent proDtem o, cntrcal method is largely tactical;
it is how to convcy the
r72 r73

'--- I

I'OUR SUARTETS
force. iustice and full signi6cance of onc's mature judgment. There
crn beio coercivelv demonstreted conclusions; one works, and hopes,
for convinced concurrence.
IVe are considering the part played in Eliot's creative thought by
'pattern' and 'dance', ideas or themes that' as we apprehend them, are
involved in a complexity of varying and cumulative evocation' It
seems, then, te obvious tiling to tun with our guestions a couple of
pages on from the passage in movement II of'Burnt Norton' to the
opening of V:
Words move, music tooves
Only in time; but that *'hich is only living
Can only die' Words, after speech, reach
Into the silerce' Only by the form, the pattern,
Can t'ords or music reach
as a Chinese jar still
The stillness,
Moves perpetually in its stillness'
The distinctive kind of creativeness with which Eliot's genius focuses
consciously on language is illustratcd in the last two lines in the way
the 'still' (placed with a characteristic perection ofart t the Iine's cnd)
of 'still mves perpetually' stands enclosed between the repeated 'still'
of the first and the concluding 'stillness'. One may ask, not very
urgently (such is the irresistible felicity of the whole effect),- whether
thJ form of e Chinese jar really comes under 'pattern'. Not very
urgently, because the Chinesc jar is felt to bear rather on'stillness'
it
than on 'pattern', introducing as does
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only . characterize. FIe can, and insistently does, by creative sugg;stion
The question that engages us is again: What is the relation between
'the siill poinC and 'the dance' (or 'pattern')l It seems to me plain
bv ,ro* ti,"t Eliot has no intellectually statable answer in his mind
fr us to elicit from the'music'. W-e have perhaps been led to take
'pattern' with a mistaken kind of seriousness. "Pattern', it is true' as
lio, u-"", it, is a word belonging to the age, ):ut nevertheless, as I
hare noted, Eliot's 'pattern' is not a closc analogue of the rhythmic
pattern of electrons in which the physicist sees the basic physical
ieality. EIiot himself is o course intensely concerned to achieve a sure
appr"hen.ion of what he can fcel to be the ultimately real-and that
wuld, ofits nature, be an achievement universally valid for humanity'
r74
.BURNT NORTON'
It is true that the emphasis Harding lays on recoil from death might
seem to have an endorsement in
'Words
move, music moves
Only in time; bur that which is only living
Can only die
-which makes one think of Yeats's
Whatever is begotten, born and dies,
Eliot's preoccupation with establishing an apprehension o{ and so an
assured relation .azith, an eternal reality is, in its disciplined pertinacity,
its subtlety, and its intellectual resource, a more serious and impressive
thing than Yeats's. Yet the part played in its intensity by the peculiar
desperateness of his need can't but alert our critical'sense to the
question, how far his findings have the validity to which, necessarily,
they make an implicit claim-for Eliot we take with the appropriaie
seriousness: there are no Swamis or Madame Blavatskys or symbolic
elaborations in his case.
The reality his concern for which erplains the emphasis laid on
'pattern' and 'dance' in his'music'is, in contradstinction to the
physicist's, spiritual, But as the first sentence I quoted from Harding
brought horne to-me, not only is'spiritual, an equivocal word; it may
cover irreconcilable intentions. Let me say at once that it does in
Eliot-or at least that it points to a paradox that, when one considers
it in the complexities of his poem, onc has to judge to be an essential
contradictron. The ultimate really real that l,liot seeks in Four
Q.uartets .is eternal reality, and that he can do little, directly, to
continue yariously to convey e force of what is said in
Except for the point, the still point,
Tere r.vould be no dance, and there is only the dance.
The'dance', the'pattern', to be found by the individual human
bcing in his lived experience is e significance rhat might be given to
his life and so to his inevitable dea, making both acceptable; but
except by relation to the ultimately real, which is eternal, there is no
(Eliot is emphatic) significance. The 'still point, except for which
there rvould be no dance is not now just,the still point'ofthe opening
phrase of the paragraph. That, though a striking paradox, is simply,
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