FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89  
90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   >>  
have not fared any too well at our hands; but they do not need help as badly by far as the poets need it. What with commissions and sales, scholarships, fellowships, and substantial prizes, the painters and sculptors and architects and even the musicians have, broadly speaking, been able to learn and practise their art in that peace and security which is well-nigh essential to all artistic apprenticeship and productive mastery. They have usually been able to spend more of the year in the country than the poet. And even when bound as fast as he to the city, they have not been forced to choose between burning the candle at both ends or abandoning their art. But for some recondite reason--perhaps because this art cannot be taught at all--it has always been an accepted American conviction that poetry is a thing which may be thrown off at any time as a side issue by highly organized persons, most of whose time and strength and faculties are engaged in a vigorous and engrossing hand-to-hand bout with the wolf on the threshold--a most practical, philistine wolf, moreover, which never heard of rhyme or rhythm, and whose whole acquaintance with prosody is confined to a certain greedy familiarity with frayed masculine and feminine endings. As a result of this common conviction our poets have almost invariably been obliged to make their art a quite subsidiary and haphazard affair, like the rearing of children by a mother who is forced to go out and scrub from early morning till late at night and has to leave little Johnnie tied in his high chair to be fed by an older sister on crusts dabbled in the pot of cold coffee. No wonder that so much of our verse "jest growed," like Topsy. And the resulting state of things has but served to reinforce our belief that to make the race of poets spend their days in correcting encyclopaedia proof, or clerking, or running, notebook in hand, to fires--inheres in the eternal fitness of things. Bergson says in "Creative Evolution," that "an intelligence which reflects is one that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over and above practically useful efforts." Does it not follow that when we make the poet spend all his energy in the practically useful effort of running to fires, we prevent him from enjoying the very advantage which made man a reflective being, to say nothing of a poet? Perhaps we have never yet realized that this attitude of ours would turn poetic success into a ques
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89  
90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   >>  



Top keywords:

practically

 

energy

 

things

 
running
 
conviction
 

forced

 
crusts
 

dabbled

 

sister

 

subsidiary


poetic
 

coffee

 

growed

 

haphazard

 

affair

 
children
 

mother

 

morning

 

success

 
rearing

Johnnie

 
resulting
 

reflects

 

advantage

 

intelligence

 

Evolution

 

Bergson

 
Creative
 

originally

 

prevent


efforts

 

effort

 

surplus

 

enjoying

 

fitness

 

eternal

 

Perhaps

 

reinforce

 

belief

 

served


follow

 

attitude

 

realized

 

notebook

 

reflective

 

inheres

 
clerking
 

correcting

 

encyclopaedia

 

practical