|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Book, page 171 / 276 If on his cheek unholy blood Burned for one youthful hour, 'Twas but the flushing of the bud That bloomed a milk-white flower. [Footnote: _After a Lecture on Moore_.] One may lay it down as an axiom among poets that their ethical natures must develop spontaneously, or not at all. An attempt to force one's moral instincts will inevitably cramp and thwart one's art. It is unparalleled to find so great a poet as Coleridge plaintively asserting, "I have endeavored to feel what I ought to feel," [Footnote: Letter to the Reverend George Coleridge, March 21, 1794.] and his brothers have recoiled from his words. His declaration was, of course, not equivalent to saying, "I have endeavored to feel what the world thinks I ought to feel," but even so, one suspects that the philosophical part of Coleridge was uppermost at the time of this utterance, and that his obligatory feelings did not flower in a _Christabel_ or a _Kubla Khan_. The real parting of the ways between the major and minor contingents of poets comes when certain writers maintain, not merely their freedom from conventional moral standards, but a perverse inclination to seek what even they regard as evil. This is, presumably, a logical, if unconscious, outgrowth of the romantic conception of art as "strangeness added to beauty." For the decadents conceive that the loveliness of virtue is an age-worn theme which has grown so obvious as to lose its aesthetic appeal, whereas the manifold variety of vice contains unexplored possibilities of fresh, exotic beauty. Hence there has been on their part an ardent pursuit of hitherto undreamed-of sins, whose aura of suggestiveness has not been rubbed off by previous artistic expression. The decadent's excuse for his vices is that his office is to reflect life, and that indulgence of the senses quickens his apprehension of it. He is apt to represent the artist as "a martyr for all mundane moods to tear," [Footnote: See John Davidson, A Ballad in Blank Verse.] and to indicate that he is unable to see life steadily and see it whole until he has experienced the whole gamut of crime.[Footnote: See Oscar Wilde, Ravenna; John Davidson, A Ballad in Blank Verse on the Making of a Poet, A Ballad of an Artist's Wife; Arthur Symons, There's No Lust Like to
|
Knowledgerush Search
|
|
Contact Us
| Privacy Statement & Terms of Use
|