INTRODUCTION TO POETRY

PART I

POETIC EXPRESSION

§ 1. Talking and Writing.-" We are all poets," said Carlyle, "when we read a poem well," and Emerson echoes him in the remark, "Tis the good reader makes the good book." Plainly, then, our first business is to learn how to read. Even to read an article in a newspaper requires a certain preparation. We must know something of the subject, for example, or we shall not be able to follow the argument, and we must know something of the language, or we shall not be able to form a judgment on the style. A style (Latin, stylus) is a pen. When we take a pen in our hand, and begin to write, we have to start choosing our words. In the ordinary talk of everyday life this choice of words is instinctive. In school, or at home, in the playground, or at the dinner-table,

1

A

there is not much variety in what we say. We may talk for several hours a day, but we do not use many words. We say the same things many times over. But when a man takes the trouble to write instead of speaking, it is—or it should be-because he has something to say which will be of permanent value. He ought to say something new, useful, and beautiful, which is not to be found in the ordinary talk of everyday life. Accordingly, he will use a different language. One mark of the difference is that literature must always finish its sentences. Most of the sentences in talk are broken and unfinished. The eye, the hand, the inflection of the voice, and, not least, the sympathy of the listener, do half our talking for us. They cannot do half our writing. Literature, again, is never in a hurry. If a writer has something worth saying, he has leisure to find words to say it well. For instance, instead of saying just now "the ordinary talk of everyday life," I might have written "common speech." The one is colloquial, or the language of speaking, the other is literary, or the language of writing. In the phrase "common speech," the same meaning is conveyed by the use of fewer words. In a sense, too, the words are more dignified, more worthy, that is to say, of being written down. For one thing, they contain no redundancy. In the hurry of talk, with its need

TALKING AND WRITING

3

of emphasising our meaning, we are apt to repeat ourselves, and the idea of "everyday" is already contained in "ordinary." But literature can afford to exact its full measure from each word, and the words "common speech" form together the most direct complete expression of the thought in my mind. Moreover, they suggest to a well-read man certain other thoughts of a similar kind. The words possess what are called associations. They tune the reader's mind to the key that we wish to strike. Thus "common" suggests two ideas, those of "the community," and of "vulgar," both of which are helpful to the notion here to be conveyed, and "speech" is the simplest technical term for that use of language by mankind which is yet not literature. Together, then, the words convey in a heightened and more definite degree the sense of the longer phrase, "the ordinary talk of everyday life." Thus, to go back to the purpose of the pen, we see that a good style is the selection of the fewest possible words to express a thought worth preserving, and their combination in the most appropriate way.

§ 2. Literary Language: Purism.—Literature, then, does not use the same language as speech. By its power and duty of selection, it influences words in various directions. It may preserve