MR. JOHN BURROUGHS ON POE.
( To the Editor of THE DIAL.)
Without taking up the cudgels for Poe and trying to think of one real thing
made more dear to us by his matchless rhyme, without depreciating our New England
poets and hinting that it might have been yet better had they cared a little
more for art, one may still feel that all is not for the best in the remarks
of Mr. John Burroughs in your last number (unless, perhaps, we at once turn
the page and consider some of the questions put by Mrs. Woolley toward the
beginning
of her communication). It is doubtless true that there are many with whom the
purely art value, so-called, is the only thing to consider in a poem or a picture.
But the number of such is, on the whole, small. It is quite right to say that
with most readers this view is held less and less in sight. We in America,
at least, need no incitement to value literature, or anything else, for its
practical
worth, or for what may seem such. If we need caution, it is on the other side.
We do not need to be told that thought is important,—we know it is, and we
are always on the lookout for it. But we do need to be told that art or style
is
of value too, for, as a rule, we are not so much on the lookout for that; or,
if we are, we don't know it so well when we see it.
The more we are told by critics whom we honor (like Mr. John Burroughs) that
thought is important and that art counts for less, the more do we fall into
the error that thought is all-important and that art counts
for nothing,—and then we have poems like Miss Emily Dickinson's, for
example.
Now style, or form, or art, or whatever else one may call it, is important.
And, more to the point, style is difficult. It is difficult to attain, and
it is, on the whole, difficult to appreciate. That it is difficult to appreciate
good style, may seem a hard saying; one may think that if a thing be done in
the best way everybody will recognize it. It is not so. To appreciate style
needs
training. And this training we in America will not undergo, so long as we are
told that art is unimportant.
One great use of the "full-blown professional literary critic " is
that he is apt to insist on art for art's sake. And one great good thing in
a poet like Poe is that he shows its what art for art's sake can do. There
is small danger that we shall go too far with either. There are comparatively
few
so constituted by nature that they ever could enjoy art for art's sake if they
wanted to. There is little danger that we shall go too far in that direction.
The important thing is that we go at all. And go some way we must, or literature
runs down-hill, and at the bottom we have a horde of writers with plenty of
thought perhaps, with plenty of messages for their time, with plenty of feeling
for life,
and with the highest ethical or sociological aspirations, but no style at all—because
they don't know what it is.
Especially here in the West do we need to be constantly reminded of the value
of art, to be taught what is style, to be told even (though it isn't so)
that form in art is everything. We are not likely to take it too much to
heart,
and we may learn something from it. I sometimes almost wish that Mr. Oscar
Wilde
would come out here again. He could hardly get us to be like Gilbert and
Ernest and Cyril and Vivian, but he might perhaps prevent us from becoming
what we
are likely to become if we persist in binding it upon the tablets of our
hearts that
good poetry is only a criticism of life.
EDWARD E. HALE, JR.
State University of Iowa, Oct. 20, 1898.