传统与个人才能
[英]艾略特
卞之琳 译
一
在英文著述中我们不常说起传统，虽然有时候也用它的名字来惋惜它的缺乏。我们无从讲到“这种传统”或“一种传统”，至多不过用形容词来说某人的诗是“传统的”，或甚至“太传统化了”。这种字眼恐伯根本就不常见，除非在贬责一类的语句中。不然的话，也是用来表示一种浮泛的称许，而言外对于所称许的作品不过认作一件有趣的考古学的复制品而已。你几乎无法用传统这个字叫英国人听来觉得顺耳，如果没有轻松地提到令人放心的考古学的话。
当然在我们对已往或现在作家的鉴赏中，这个名词不会出现。每个国家，每个民族，不但有自己的创作的也有自己的批评的气质；但对于自己批评习惯的短处与局限性甚至于比自己创作天才的短处与局限性更容易忘掉。从许多法文论著中我们知道，或自以为知道了，法国人的批评方法或习惯；我们便断定(我们是这样不自觉的民族)说法国人比我们“更挑剔”，有时侯甚至于因此自呜得意，仿佛法国人比不上我们来得自然。也许他们是这样；但我们自己该想到批评是象呼吸一样重要的，该想到当我们读一本书而觉得有所感的时候，我们不妨明白表示我们心里想到的种种，也不妨批评我们在批评工作中的心理。在这种过程中有一点事实可以看出来；我们称赞一个诗人的时候，我们的倾向往往专注于他在作品中和别人最不相同的地方。我们自以为在他作品中的这些或这些部分看出了什么是他个人，什么是他的特质。我们很满意地谈论诗人和他前辈的异点，尤其是和他前一辈的异点，我们竭力想挑出可以独立的地方来欣赏。 实在呢，假如我们研究一个诗人，撇开了他的偏见，我们却常常会看出：他的作品，不仅最好的部分，就是最个人的部分也是他前辈诗人最有力地表明他们的不朽的地方。我并非指易接受影响的青年时期，乃指完全成熟的时期。
然而，如果传统的方式仅限于追随前一代，或仅限于盲目的或胆怯的墨守前—代成功的方法， “传统”自然是不足称道了。 我们见过许多这样单纯的潮流很快便消失在沙里了；新颖总比重复好。传统是具有广泛得多的意义的东西。它不是继承得到的。 你如要得到它，你必须用很大的劳力。第—、它含有历史的意识，我们可以说这对于任何人想在二十五岁以上还要继续作诗人的差不多是不可缺少的历史的意识又含有一种领悟，不但要理解过去的过去性，而且还要理解过去的现存性，历史的意识不但使人写作时有他自己那一代的背景，而且还要感到从荷马以来欧洲整个的文学及其本国整个的文学有一个同时的存在，组成一个同时的局面。这个历史的意识是对于永久的意识也是对于暂时的意识也是对于永久和暂时的合起来的意识。就是这个意识使一个作家成为传统性的。同时也就是这个意识使一个作家最敏锐地意识到自己在时间中的地位，自己和当代的关系。
诗人，任何艺术的艺术家，谁也不能单独的具有他完全的意义。他的重要性以及我们对他的鉴赏就是鉴赏对他和已往诗人以及艺术家的关系。你不能把他单独的评价，你得把他放在前人之间来对照，来比较。我认为这是一个不仅是历史的批评原则，也是美学的批评原则。他之必须适应，必须符合，并不是单方面的；产生一件新艺术作品，成为一个事件，以前的全部艺术作品就同时遭逢了一个新事件。现存的艺术经典本身就构成一个理想的秩序，这个秩序由于新的(真正新的)作品被介绍进来而发生变化。这个已成的秩序在新作品出现以前本是完整的，加入新花样以后要继续保持完整，整个的秩序就必须改变一下，即使改变得很小；因此每件艺术作品对于整体的关系、比例和价值就重新调整了；这就是新与旧的适应。谁要是同意这个关于秩序的看法， 同意欧洲文学和英国文学自有其格局的，谁听到说过去因现在而改变正如现在为过去所指引，就不致于认为荒谬。诗人若知道这 —点，他就会知道重大的艰难和责任了。
在一个特殊的意义中，他也会知道他是不可避免的要经受过去标准所裁判。我说被裁判不是被制裁；不是被裁判比从前的坏些，好些，或是一样好；当然也不是用从前许多批评家的规律来裁判。这是把两种东西互相权衡的—种裁判，一种比较。如果只是适应过去的种种标准．那么，对一部新作只来说，实际上根本不会去适应这些标准，它也不会是新的。因此就算不得是一件艺术作品。我们也不是说，因为它适合，新的就更有价值。但是它之能适合，总是对于它的价值的一种测验----这种测验，的确，只能慢慢地谨慎地进行，因为我们谁也不是决不会错误地对适应进行裁判的人，我们说：它看来是适应的，也许倒是独特的，或是， 它看来是独特的，也许可以是适应的，但我们总不至于断定它只是这个而不是那个。
现在进一步来更明白的解释诗人对于过去的关系：他不能把过去当作乱七八糟的一团，也不能完全靠私自崇拜的一两个作家来训练自己，也不能完全靠特别喜欢的某一时期来训练自己。第一条路是走不通的，第二条是年轻人的一种重要经验，第三条是愉 快而可取的一种弥补。诗人必须深刻地感觉到主要的潮流，而主要的潮流却未必都经过那些声名显著的作家。他必须深知这个明显的事实；艺术从不会进步，而艺术的题材也从不会完全一样。他必须明了欧洲的心灵，本国的心灵----他到时候自会知道这比他自己私人的心灵更重要几倍的----是一种会变化的心灵，而这种变 化是一种发展，这种发展决不会在路上抛弃什么东西，也不会把莎士比亚，荷马，或马格达钵时期的作画人的石画，都变成老朽。这种发展，也许是精炼化，当然是复杂化，但在艺术家看来不是什么进步。也许在心理学家看来也不是进步，或没有达到我们所想象的程度；也许最后发现这不过是出之于经济与机器的影响而已。但是现在与过去的不同在于：我们所意识到的现在是对于过去的一种认识，而过去对于它自身的认识就不能表示出这种认识处于什么状况，达到什么程度。
有人说： “死去的作家离我们很远，因为我们比他们知道得多得多。”确是这样，他们正是我们所知道的。
我很知道往往有一种反对意见，反对我显然是为诗歌这一个行当所拟的部分纲领。反对的理由是：我这种教条要求博学多识(简直是炫学)达到了可笑的地步，这种要求即使向任何—座众神殿去了解诗人生平也会遭到拒绝。我们甚至于断然说学识丰富会使诗的敏感麻木或者反常。可是，我们虽然坚信诗人应该知道得愈多愈好，只要不妨害他必需的感受性和必需的懒散性，如把知识仅限于用来应付考试，客厅应酬，当众炫耀的种种，那就不足取了。有些人能吸收知识，而较为迟钝的则非流汗不能得。莎士比亚从普鲁塔克所得到的真实历史知识比大多数人从整个大英博物馆所能得到的还要多。我们所应坚持的，是诗人必须获得或发展对于过去的意识，也必须在他的毕生事业中继续发展这个意识。
于是他就得随时不断地放弃当前的自己，归附更有价值的东西，一个艺术家的前进是不断地牺牲自己，不断地消灭自己的个性。
现在应当要说明的，是这个消灭个性的过程及其对于传统意识的关系。要做到消灭个性这一点，艺术才可以说达到科学的地步了。因此，我请你们(作为一种发人深省的比喻)注意：当一根白金丝放到一个贮有氧气和二氧化硫的瓶里去的时候所发生的作用。
二
诚实的批评和敏感的鉴赏，并不注意诗人而注意诗，如果我们留意到报纸批评家的乱叫和一般人应声而起的人云亦云，我们会听到很多诗人的名字；如果我们并不想得到蓝皮书的知识而想欣赏诗，却不容易找到一首诗。我在前面已经试图指出一首诗对别的作者写的待的关系如何重要，表示了诗歌是自古以来一切诗 歌的有机的整体这一概念。这种诗歌的非个人理论，它的另一面就是诗对于它的作者的关系。我用一个比喻来暗示成熟诗人的心灵与未成熟诗人的心灵所不同之处并非就在“个性”价值上，也不一定指哪个更饶有兴味或“更富有涵义”，而是指哪个是更完美的工具，可以让特殊的，或颇多变比的各种情感能在其中自由组成新的结合。
我用的是化学上的催化剂的比喻。当前面所说的两种气体混合在一起，加上一条白金丝，它们就化合成硫酸。这个化合作用只有在加上白金的时候才会发生；然而新化合物中却并不含有一点儿白金。白金呢，显然末受影响，还是不动，依旧保持中性，毫无变化。诗人的心灵既是一条白金丝。它可以部分地或全部地在诗人本身的经验上起作用，但艺术家愈企完美，这个感受的人与创造的心灵在他的身上分离得愈是彻底，心灵愈能完善地消化和点化那些它作为材科的激情。
这些经验，你会注意到这些受接触变化的元素，是有两种：情绪与感觉。一件艺术作品对于欣赏者的效力是一种特殊的经验，和任何非艺术的经验根本不同，它可以由一种感情所造成，或者几种感情的结合；因作者特别的词汇、语句，或意象而产生的各种感觉，也可以加上去造成最后的结果。还有伟大的诗可以无须直接用任何情感作成的，尽可以纯用感觉。《神曲》中《地狱》第十五歌，是显然的使那种情景里的感情逐渐紧张起来，但是它的效力，虽然象任何艺术作品的效力一样单纯，却是从许多细节的错综里得来的。最后四行给我们一个意象，一种依附在意象上的感觉，这是自己来的，不是仅从前节发展出来的，大概是先悬搁在诗人的心灵中，直等到相当的结合来促使它加入了进去。诗人的心灵实在是—种贮藏器，收藏着无数种感觉、词句、意象，搁在那儿，直等到能组成新化合物的各分子到齐了。
假如你从这部最伟大的诗歌中挑出几段代表性的章节来比较，你会看出结合的各种类型是多么不同，也会看出主张“崇高”的任何半伦理的批评标准是怎样的全然不中肯。因为诗之所以有价值，并不在感情的‘伟大”与强烈，不是由于这些成分，而在艺术作用的强烈，也可以说是结合时所加压力的强烈。巴奥罗与弗兰西斯加的一段穿插是用了一种确定的感情的，但是诗的强烈性与它在假想的经验中可能给与的任何强烈印象颇为不同。而且它并不比第二十六歌写尤利西斯的漂流更为强烈，那一歌却并不直接依靠着一种情感。在点化感情的过程中有种种变化是可能的；阿伽门农的被刺，奥赛罗的苦恼，都产生一种艺术效果，比起但丁作品里的情景来，显然是更形逼真。在《阿伽门农》里， 艺术的感情仿佛己接近目睹真相者的情绪。在《奥赛罗》里，艺术的情绪仿佛已接近剧中主角本身的情绪了。但是艺术与事件的差别总是绝对的：阿伽门农被刺的结合和尤利西斯漂流的结合大概是一样的复杂。在两者中任何一种情景里都有各种元素的结合。济慈的《夜莺歌》包含着许多与夜莺没有什么特别关系的感觉，但是这些感觉，也许一半是因为它那个动人的名字，一半是因为它的名声，就被夜莺凑合起来了。有一种我竭力要击破的观点，就是关于认为灵魂有真实统一性的形而上学的说法；因为我的意思是，诗人没有什么个性可以表现，只有一个特殊的工具，只是工具，不是个性，使种种印象和经验在这个工具里用种种特别的意想不到的方式来相互结合。对于诗人具有至要意义的印象和经验，而在他的诗里可能并不占有地位；而在他的诗里是很重要的印象和经验对于诗人本身，对于个性，却可能并没有什么作用。我要引一段诗，由于并不为人熟悉，正可以在以上这些见解的光亮——或黑影——之少，用新的注意力来观察一下：
如今我想甚至于要怪自己
为什么痴恋着她的美；虽然为她的死
一定要报复， 因为还没有采取任何不平常的举动。
难道蚕耗费它金黄的劳动
为的是你？为了你她才毁了自己？
是不是为了可伶的一点儿好处，那迷人的刹那，
为了维护夫人的尊严就把爵爷的身份出卖?
为什么这家伙在那边谎称拦路打劫，
把他的生命放在法官的嘴里，
来美化这样一件事----打发人马
为她显一显他们的英勇？
这一段诗里(从上下文看来是很显然的)有正反而种感情的结合：一种对于美的非常强烈的吸引和一种对于丑的同样强烈的迷惑，后者与前者作对比并加以抵消。两种感情的平衡是在这段戏词所属的剧情上，但仅恃剧情，则不足使之平衡。这不妨说是结构的感情，由戏剧造成的。但是整个的效果，主要的音调，是出于许多浮泛的感觉，对于这种感情有一种化合力，表面上虽无从明显，和它化合了就绪了我们一种新的艺术感情。
诗人所以能引人注意，能令人感到兴奋并不是为了他个人的感情，为了他生活中特殊事件所激发的感情。他特有的感情尽可以是单纯的，粗疏的，或是平板的。他诗里的感情却必须是一种极复杂的东西，但并不是象生活中感情离奇古怪的一种人所有的那种感情的复杂性。事实上，诗界中有一种炫奇立异的错误，想找新的人情来表现：这样在错误的地方找新奇，结果发现了古怪。 诗人的职务本是寻求新的感情。只是运用寻常的感情来化炼成诗，来表现实际感情中根本就没有的感觉。诗人所从未经验过的感情与他所熟习的同样可供他使用。因此我们得相信说诗等于“宁静中回忆出来的感情”是一个不精确的公式。因为诗不是感情，也不是回忆，也不是宁静(如不曲解字义)。诗是许多经验的集中，集中后所发生的新东西，而这些经验在讲实际、爱活动的一种人看来就不会是什么经验。这种集中的发生，既非出于自觉，亦非由于思考。这些经验不是“回忆出来的”，他们最终不过是结合在某种境界中，这种境界虽是“宁静”，但仅指诗人被动的伺候它们变化而已。自然，写诗不完全就是这么一回事。有许 多地方是要自觉的，要思考的。实际上，下乘的诗人往往在应当 自觉的地方不自觉，在不应当自觉的地方反而自觉。两重错误倾 向于伎他成为“个人的”。诗不是放纵感情，而是逃避感情，不是表现个性，而是逃避个性。自然，只有有个性和感情的人才会知道要逃避这种东西是什么意义。
三
灵魂乃天赐，圣洁不动情。
这篇论文打算就停止在玄学或神秘主义的边界上，仅限于得到一点实际的结论，有稗于一般对于诗有兴趣能感应的入。将兴趣由诗人身上转移到诗上是一件值得称赞的企图：因为这样一来，批评真正的诗，不论好坏，可以得到一个较为公正的评价。大多 数人只在诗里鉴赏真挚的感情的表现，一部分人能鉴赏技巧的卓越。但很少有人知道什么时候有意义重大的感情的表现，这种感情的生命是在诗中，不是在诗人的历史中。艺术的感情是非个人的。诗人若不整个地把自己交付给他所从事的工作，就不能达到非个人的地步。他也不会知道应当做什么工作，除非他所生活于其中的不但是现在而且是过去的时刻，除非他所意识到的不是死的，而是早已活着的东西。
I
IN English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition"; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is "traditional" or even "too traditional." Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archæological reconstruction. You can hardly make the word agreeable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archæology. 1
Certainly the word is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers. Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method or habit of the French; we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the French are "more critical" than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous. Perhaps they are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity. 2
Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity. 3
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities. 4
In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value—a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. We say: it appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the other. 5
To proceed to a more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past: he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of Europe—the mind of his own country—a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind—is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing en route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalenian draughtsmen. That this development, refinement perhaps, complication certainly, is not, from the point of view of the artist, any improvement. Perhaps not even an improvement from the point of view of the psychologist or not to the extent which we imagine; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication in economics and machinery. But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show. 6
Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know. 7
I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the métier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing-rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career. 8
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. 9
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide. 10
II
Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. In the last article I tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of "personality," not being necessarily more interesting, or having "more to say," but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations. 11
The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material. 12
The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely. Canto XV of the Inferno (Brunetto Latini) is a working up of the emotion evident in the situation; but the effect, though single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable complexity of detail. The last quatrain gives an image, a feeling attaching to an image, which "came," which did not develop simply out of what precedes, but which was probably in suspension in the poet's mind until the proper combination arrived for it to add itself to. The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together. 13
If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of "sublimity" misses the mark. For it is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore, than Canto XXVI, the voyage of Ulysses, which has not the direct dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the process of transmution of emotion: the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together. 14
The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality. 15
I will quote a passage which is unfamiliar enough to be regarded with fresh attention in the light—or darkness—of these observations:
And now methinks I could e'en chide myself
For doating on her beauty, though her death
Shall be revenged after no common action.
Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours
For thee? For thee does she undo herself?
Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships
For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute?
Why does yon fellow falsify highways,
And put his life between the judge's lips,
To refine such a thing—keeps horse and men
To beat their valours for her?...
In this passage (as is evident if it is taken in its context) there is a combination of positive and negative emotions: an intensely strong attraction toward beauty and an equally intense fascination by the ugliness which is contrasted with it and which destroys it. This balance of contrasted emotion is in the dramatic situation to which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is inadequate to it. This is, so to speak, the structural emotion, provided by the drama. But the whole effect, the dominant tone, is due to the fact that a number of floating feelings, having an affinity to this emotion by no means superficially evident, have combined with it to give us a new art emotion. 16
It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected," and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. 17
III
This essay proposes to halt at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism, and confine itself to such practical conclusions as can be applied by the responsible person interested in poetry. To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad. There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.
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发表于 2011-10-11 13:44
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