A Poet's Notebook

A POET’S NOTEBOOK

EDITH SITWELL

Contents

FOREWORD

I. ON THE POET’S NATURE.

II. NOTES ON THE NATURE OF POETRY

1. On Poetry of the Greatest Kind

2. Of the Great Poems from the Depths

3. Of Lyrical Poems and other Poems of a Small, but Perfect, Kind

4. Applicable to Modern Poetry

5. Applicable to Works of a Certain Kind

III. NOTES ON TECHNICAL MATTERS

1. On Texture

2. On Technical Perfection

3. On the Essence of Sound

4. On Rhythm

5. On the Modern Use of Rhythm

6. On Form

7. On Harmony and Proportion

8. On Style

9. On Technical Experiments

10. Applicable to Free Verse

11. On Rhyme

12. On the Sonnet

IV. ON A NECESSITY OF POETRY: THE CENTRE, THE CORE

V. ON MORALITY IN POETRY

VI. ON SIMPLICITY

VII. ON THE SENSES

VIII. ON OVER-CIVILISATION

IX. THE NEED FOR THE REFRESHING OF THE LANGUAGE

X. ON THE POET’S LABOUR

XI. On IMAGERY IN POETRY

XII. ON THE POET, THE NATURAL WORLD, AND INSPIRATION

XIII. ON THE POWER OF WORDS

XIV. OF THE DEATHS OF TWO POETS (SIDNEY AND SHELLEY)

XV. OF BEN JONSON

XVI. APPLICABLE TO THE AUGUSTANS

XVII. SOME NOTES ON ALEXANDER POPE

1. Of his Personal Character

2. Of the Perfection of Pope

3. Applicable to the Work of Pope

4. Of the Technical Side of Pope’s Work

5. Of the Heroic Couplet

6. Of Pope’s Sense of Texture

XVIII. A NOTE ON BYRON

XIX. APPLICABLE TO BLAKE

XX. APPLICABLE TO BAUDELAIRE

XXI. APPLICABLE TO VERLAINE

XXII. A NOTE ON THE EARLIEST ENGLISH POETRY

XXIII. NOTES ON CHAUCER

XXIV. NOTES ON CERTAIN POEMS BY DUNBAR, SKELTON, GOWER, AND A POEM BY AN ANONYMOUS POET

XXV. NOTES ON HERRICK

XXVI. NOTES ON SMART, WITH A NOTE ON GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

XXVII. NOTES ON WORDSWORTH

1. Applicable to Wordsworth

2. On Wordsworth

3. On Certain Flaws in this Great Poet

4. Of the Differences between Sorrow in the Poems of Wordsworth and Shelley

XXVIII. NOTES ON SHAKESPEARE

1. On Elisions in Shakespeare

2. A Note on Sonnet XIX

EPILOGUE: TWO POEMS BY EDITH SITWELL

(I) A Mother to her Dead Child

(II) Green Song

Foreword

THE aphorisms on Poetry, or applicable to Poetry, with which this book begins were noted down by me, originally, for my private use. All — or nearly all — poets have made examinations into the necessities of Poetry, and I, for one, would rather read by the light of the sun than by lamplight.

In these notes we see Poetry and her necessities as they are seen by the eyes of the poet. These aphorisms throw a light, for me at least, on questions concerning Poetry. I hope they will do this for the readers. Some notes throw lights that are profound, others are like the happy little bee-winged lights of summer, staying for a moment on a flower — they come there purely for pleasure.

Among the most profound lights thrown on the necessities of our time is the aphorism of Baudelaire’s on ‘the animal of genius’, page 4.

There are many aphorisms about Simplicity, firstly because the search for the quintessence, the fusion of elements into a single current — the current that comes from the central core — is one of the principal necessities of Poetry to-day, — secondly because it is believed, by some, that simplicity is shown by debility and a feebleminded lack of muscle. — The right kind of simplicity is the result of ‘the hero’s immovable core’, and is a matter of grandeur and of strength, of perfect balance, of a heroic nakedness, of ‘the raw elegance of the Lion’. A return to the savagery of the senses — a voice that speaks ‘somewhat above a mortal mouth’ — and a grandeur of simplicity — these are among the principal necessities of Poetry at this time. Therefore Baudelaire’s saying about the animal of genius, and Leonardo’s notes about the olfactory and optic nerves of the lion, have a huge import.

The problems of the various arts touch each other. There are therefore, in this book, many aphorisms which dealt, originally, with music and with painting. They apply, equally, to Poetry.

Some people may cavil at the arrangement of the book. The notes are not arranged chronologically. But the reason for this is, I think, obvious. The shorter notes follow the aphorisms, excepting in the case of a note on the Earliest English Poetry, which belongs, by its nature, to the notes on Chaucer and the notes on early poets which follow those on Chaucer.

Again, it may be asked why I have not included more notes from Wordsworth’s, Coleridge’s, and Shelley’s writings on Poetry. The answer is, that this is my Notebook, and that one would not collect notes from these writers, excepting in cases where one wishes to underline a remark in its relation to other aphorisms.

I hope that the meanings of the aphorisms, and their relationship to each other, will not be found obscure. For me they are not, and I trust they will not be for others. One can but give what one believes to be the truth. In the words of Whitman, that basely slandered man who was one of the greatest of all poets, that inspired and great soul who has been seen through the dirty eyes of little, mean, and meagre souls — ‘Whatever satisfies the soul is truth’.

These truths satisfy mine.

EDITH SITWELL

I

On the Poet’s Nature

‘THE sun shone on all statues, but only the statue of Memnon gave forth a sound’.—SCHOPENHAUER (‘On the Senses’), The World as Will and Idea. Trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp.

‘We naturalize ourselves to the employment of eternity.’—BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Aphorisms.

‘His step is the migration of peoples, a migration greater than all ancient invasions’.— ARTHUR RIMBAUD (‘Genius’), Les Illuminations. Trans. Helen Rootham.

‘… countries, and things of which countries are made, elements, planet itself, laws of planets and of men, have passed through this man as bread into his body, and become no longer bread, but body’.—EMERSON (‘Plato, or the Philosopher’), Representative Men.

‘What, it will be Question’d, when the Sun rises, do you not see a round disk of fire somewhat like a guinea? Oh no, no, I see an Innumerable Company of the Heavenly Host crying Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty. I question not my Corporeal or Vegetative Eye any more than I would Question a Window concerning a Sight. I look thro’ it & not with it’.—BLAKE, Vision of the Last Judgment.

The Experience of the Poet during Creation

‘… passing from passion to reason, from thanksgiving to adoring, from sense to spirit, from considering ourselves to an union with God.’— JEREMY TAYLOR, Holy Living.

‘… this prodigious overflowing of all barriers of phenomenality must necessarily evoke an incomparable ecstasy in the inspired musician…. There is but one state that can surpass the musician’s, the state of the Saint; and that, especially because it is enduring, and incapable of being clouded, whilst the ecstatic clairvoyance of a musician alternates with an ever-recurring state of individual consciousness’— WAGNER, Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.

What is true of the musician is also true of the poet.—E. S.

II

Notes on the Nature of Poetry

1. On Poetry of the Greatest Kind The Fountain-head

‘O eternal Truth! and true Charity! and dear Eternity!’.—ST. AUGUSTINE, Confessions.

"… the theme of the Gospel … proclaims Eternity as an event’.—BARTH, The Epistle to the Romans.

Is not this true of the greatest poetry?—E. S.

‘The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion.’—BLAKE, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

‘Caedmon … having gone out to the stable of the beasts of burden, the care of which was entrusted to him on that night, and there, at the proper time, having resigned his limbs to sleep, a certain one stood by him in a dream, and said, Caedmon…. Sing the beginning of created things.’—BEDE. Trans. Gidley.

May not the following four aphorisms on Music be applied equally to Poetry of the greatest kind?—E. S.

‘Music, as Schopenhauer has made clear to us, is not a representation of the world, but an immediate voice of the world.’—ARTHUR SYMONS, Studies in Seven Arts.

‘Schopenhauer … recognises in music itself an Idea of the world, wherein the world immediately exhibits its essential nature.’—WAGNER Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.

In Schopenhauer’s own words, ‘Music never expresses phenomena, but solely the inner being, the essence of phenomena’.—(‘Metaphysics of Music’) The World as Will and Idea, quoted as an epilogue in Wagner’s Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.

‘Music … expresses the inner being, the essence of phenomena, the Will itself, and represents accordingly the metaphysics of all that is physical in the world, the thing per se, which lies beyond all appearance.’—Ibid.

‘The poetic idea which disengages itself from the movement, in the lines, would seem to postulate the existence of a vast being, immense, complicated but of harmonious proportion — an animal full of genius, suffering and sighing all sighs and all human ambitions.’—BAUDELAIRE, Fusées.

‘… Poetry, prophecy, and the high insight, are from a wisdom of which man is not master … the gods never philosophise.’—EMERSON (‘Plato, or the Philosopher’), Representative Men.

‘Music … would seem to reveal the most secret sense of scene, action, event, environment.’—WAGNER, Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.

Is not this also true of Poetry?—E. S.

‘As Christianity arose from under the civilisation of Rome, so from the Chaos of modern civilisation music burst forth. Both affirm: Our kingdom is not of this world. That is to say, We come from within, you from without. We spring from the essential nature of things, you from its semblance.’—WAGNER Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.

Poetry of the greatest kind springs from the essential nature of things, not from its semblance. But poetry has its phenomena in nature, its outward and revelatory being. Poetry is also the visible world, with its images of wonder.—E. S.

Cézanne declared, ‘I have not tried to produce Nature; I have represented it.’—Quoted in MARTIN ARMSTRONG’S The Major Pleasures of Life.

This great painter must be held to be right, according to the necessities of the art of which he was a practitioner. But in Poetry the exact opposite is right. To represent Nature, in Poetry, would mean, not that Nature is heard or seen through a temperament, but that Nature was un-assimilated by the poet, had not ‘passed into this man as bread into his body’. (See page 1.)—E. S.

The greatest poet has a ‘strong solving sense to reconcile his poetry with the appearances of the world’.—EMERSON (‘Plato, or the Philosopher’), Representative Men.

‘Music blots out an entire civilisation as sunshine does lamplight.’— WAGNER, Beethoven. Trans. E. Dannreuther.

This is true of the greatest poetry in a certain kind. It is true of Shakespeare’s Comedies. In another kind, poetry is a sun whose light does not blot out a civilisation, but fuses it into a single being. This is true of certain of Shakespeare’s characters.— E. S.

‘The Greeks said that Alexander went as far as Chaos; Goethe went, only the other day, as far; and one step farther he hazarded, and brought himself straight back’.—EMERSON (‘Goethe, or the Writer’), Representative Men.

‘He’ (Goethe) ‘had a power to unite the detached atoms again by their own law’.—Ibid.

‘He’ (Plato), ‘from the sunlike centrality and reach of his vision, had a faith without cloud’.— EMERSON (‘Plato, or the Philosopher’), Representative Men.

‘Can no father beget or mother conceive a man-child so entire and so elastic that whatever … syllable he speaks, it shall be melodious to all creatures, and none shall be an exception to the universal and affectionate Yes of the earth?’—WHITMAN, Notebooks.

‘If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.’— St. Paul, i Corinthians xiii.

‘We have done nothing … if we have not purified the will in the order of charity.’ — St. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel.

‘Thought without affection makes a distinction between Love and Wisdom as it does between body and spirit.’—BLAKE (annotations to Swedenborg’s Wisdom of Angels Concerning Divine Love and Divine Wisdom), Marginalia.

‘His’ (the greatest poet’s) ‘brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer, he is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling