Some thoughts from Lord Macauley

[Norman_D_Gutter]

Thomas Babington Macaulay was a late-Romantic, early-Victorian era writer in England, who had a number of critical essays on poetry and other literature. His essay "Milton" appeared in the August 1825 edition of The Edinburg Review. This was a review of John Milton's writing, both prose and poetry. Well, it was actually a review of a translation by Sumner of Milton's work in Latin "A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone". So, rather than calling this Macaulay on Milton, I guess it should be called Macaulay on Sumner on Milton. You can find a picture, and links to works and biographical material, at this link (www.strecorsoc.org/macaulay/picture.html).
In this essay, Macaulay gives some thoughts on poetry as an art. Now bear in mind that Macaulay was not a poet of renown. His essays and histories are heavy stuff (as is much Victorian lit.), though he is interesting if you can put your mind to it.

What are your thoughts on this, PFFA? Do you agree with him? Think he was two steps ahead of the men in the white coats? Somewhat correct?

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[From the essay, but with my emphasis in certain places]

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments.... Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation.

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less it is thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical.

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours....

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose most completely in a dark age....
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For those interested, the text of this essay came from Critical & Historical Essays by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume One, published by J.M. Dent & Sons, first in 1907. The volume I have was published in 1913. It was brought to America by a distant cousin, David Rickie, in 1915, and was passed down through the family. I have an older version of the same essays, but the book is fagile, and I have not yet checked the text of the older version. One presumes it is the same.

NDG

[MEHope]

1825 and poetry is still thriving...me thinks he doth protest too much. :)

[Norman_D_Gutter]

Is poetry still thriving? There's lots of it being written, but every web site I visit, every poetry mag I read, every poet I talk with say that poetry has declined, perhaps not in volume but in quality of what is being produced. There's a ton of poetry out there, they say, but most of it is crap.

So it makes me wonder if Macauley has a point. Have we become so civilized and advanced that poetry has less value to us? Does that explain, at least in part, the widespread apathy to poetry in the world at large? I'm speaking, of course, through a USA colored lens here.

I think it is interesting that Macauley used this argument to say how remarkable Milton's achievements were, that he was a poet who produced excellent poetry in a civilized age--back in the mid-1600s. Interesting.

NDG

[Dunc]

I don't connect to Macauley's poetic sensibility. That was then, this is now. Regards / Dunc

[Donner]

Originally posted by Norman_D_Gutter
There's a ton of poetry out there, they say, but most of it is crap.


I would contend that that's always been the case--for every Shakespeare, there were a hundred poetasters, angsty romantics and doggerelists. There's only so much genius to go around per century.

[Rik Roots]

Originally posted by Norman_D_Gutter
Is poetry still thriving? There's lots of it being written, but every web site I visit, every poetry mag I read, every poet I talk with say that poetry has declined, perhaps not in volume but in quality of what is being produced. There's a ton of poetry out there, they say, but most of it is crap.

Yes, poetry is thriving - and (in my view) is suffering a renaissance. I attended the launch of the latest issue of Magma Magazine last night and was shocked at the size of the audience.

Is the vast majority of the poetry being written today crap? Undisputably yes. But, as Donner says above, this has always been the case. We are protected by the dross of yesteryear by the filters of time - only the best (or the most nationalistic) poems produced by our foreparents reach our ears and eyes.

Given the amount of poetry generated today, I would guess that maybe 1 in 10,000 will be read in 20 years time, maybe 1 in 100,000 will make it to the 22nd century.

So it makes me wonder if Macauley has a point. Have we become so civilized and advanced that poetry has less value to us? Does that explain, at least in part, the widespread apathy to poetry in the world at large? I'm speaking, of course, through a USA colored lens here.

I think he's largely speaking bollocks. I have a personal belief that poetry is a form of language that can short-circuit normal language barriers and get through to the core of an emotion, belief or concept. Why else do people turn to poetry in times of crisis (evidence: in the weeks after 9/11 suddenly everyone became a "poet"), or to mark the major events of their lives (weddings, funerals, etc)?

I think this has always been the case - like it's somehow hard-wired into the human brain. Every language seems to have a poetic tradition, however "civilised" the people who speak that language.

On a tangent, I think poetry plays a big role in nation-forming and tribal cohesion, but this rarely becomes apparent to us because we're part of the group - it's part of the wallpaper. This is more apparent in the UK, where the national canons don't match up, than it may be in - say - the US.

I think it is interesting that Macauley used this argument to say how remarkable Milton's achievements were, that he was a poet who produced excellent poetry in a civilized age--back in the mid-1600s. Interesting.

I must revisit Milton - I've barely skimmed his surface.