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• preext for artistic work. He seeks to portray an Bulan and ‘O make the reader feel it. Drawing a picsure may be the object of the author. He may merely 147 14 reproduce with vividness what we all see; or nar

rate what we all know. The importance of his work lies then in its technique. There is no question that technique is always to be considered in determining one's greatness as a writer.

What distinguishes the layman from the artist is that the former has no power of craftsmanship; he does not understand the secrets of any of the forms of literature; he does not know how to set down his thoughts or sentiments in a pleasing or beautiful manner. There are many laymen who have better views on morality and who possess a greater intellect than many successful authors, but they are not artists. If by knowing how to tell a story or sing a poem they could move the world,-if they had craftsmanship,-then we would call them artists.

It does not follow, however, that because an author has certain technical genius, but is destitute of any intellect, and dallies with trite ideas, that he is a great artist. To rank among the great artists perfection of form should be welded with great and important ideas of life.

CHAPTER IX

HIGH FORM OF POETRY ECSTATIC PRESENTATION OF

ADVANCED SOCIAL IDEALS

We are always fascinated by the poet who comes to the aid of the people, and is even rejected by them for his advanced ideas. We like to think of the poet as one who belongs to the minority, as a non-conformist, as a champion of liberty, as a sponsor for advanced views. We want him not to be uttering and singing the commonplaces of to-day but the truths of the morrow. In the long run it is the Shelleys and Whitmans and Ibsens that count. Even though the poets be mad like Don Quixote or Brand, and do evil with good intentions, we admire them.

What sad figures the versifiers of unimportant conceits make when confronted with the great poets who use their intellect. These petty minstrels are the same types whom Milton attacked; they are the gossips of literature who like housewives think every trivial fancy must be voiced. And when we are bored by their nuances, their play with words, their records of unprofitable incidents, they tell us we cannot appreciate poetry, that we have not "taste." Man will always listen even though disapprovingly and hostilely, if the poet reveals a soul. But the minor versifier has no soul, or if he has he keeps it out of his verses. He is ready to talk to you about his spectacles, his bath, or his dinner, but he cannot refer to his inner thoughts and feelings. Even if he does experience an emotion he often conveys it through the images of books.

Poetry which champions human liberty and shows characters battling for truth amidst persecution is always great poetry. We like to think of the poet as Baudelaire characterized him, one whose own mother does not understand him, one in whose food the public puts ashes, one with whom his own wife is not in sympathy. We like to think of him as an Ishmaelite, as one who is against his age, since the majority is often incapable of welcoming a new and great idea even emotionally treated. If he is merely a patriotic or a religious or conventionally moral poet, he will appeal to most people, but these represent the audience that is not of an elevated intellectual order. He is not universal, for people of other countries and religions, and the people of the future who will break away from the old morality will not find that he reaches their sentiments.

We want the progressive poet, and not the eternal harper on the commonplace.

Nor are these views inconsistent with the assertion that poetry should not be the handmaid of religion and morality. If it must be a handmaid, then let it be the handmaid of a universal religion, which finds its roots in thought and sane feeling; of a morality of love and justice that is still too ideal to be grasped by the age. No worthy poet to-day would write a poem merely to teach. us simple precepts of morality. In a rude age, an emotional treatment of the most commonplace ethical maxims was great poetry because these were in advance of the age. To us such a production is stale. Hence the "great" poem of one age may become nauseating to a later epoch.

Poetry is a progressive art. The emotion playing about the old ballads and legends is not as compelling as that found in the great modern novels and plays. Our great later poets and thinkers are more advanced and do not

worship superstition and defend false beliefs, or celebrate revenge and war, as the old primeval poets do. When we think of the ideal poet, it is not the champion of the middle class like Longfellow and Tennyson, or one full of the early martial spirit and drawing fighting heroes like the author of Beowulf, or the Nibelungen Lied. Nor do we think of the poet who incorporates the religious errors and legends of his time and imitates ancient epics, nor of one who portrays a preceding and bygone age. We, or at least a few of us, like to think of him as a man drawing people in the grip of passions and battling for advanced ideas. We like to think of men like Shakespeare and Ibsen, Isaiah and Job, Balzac and Cervantes, Molière and Goethe, Byron and Shelley, Burns and Heine, Whitman and Swinburne, Carducci and Nietzsche, Carlyle and Ruskin, Dostoievsky and Dickens, Hugo and Rolland. We like to think chiefly of men who were largely personal in their appeal, and depicted their own sufferings, and described grief brought about by the social construction of society which they criticized. Such poets are no dalliers with anaemic feelings. They felt what they sang and were not afraid to give sway to their emotions and ideas. They are not didacticists nor moralists, but emotional thinkers. They do not think that they ought to deny the claims of the intellect and the moral vision. I do not say that other kinds of emotional writers are not great poets. I merely cite what I think is a high order of poetry. I do not deny that poets may avoid any moral mission and just sing private emotions, whether in prose or verse. The Troubadours, and the Roman Elegists, De Musset and Verlaine, Hafiz and Keats, are among the very greatest poets, even though they are not prophets.