Select Poems of Sidney Lanier [15]
where he tells us, "Awful is art because 'tis free,"*1* and, "Each artist -- gift of terror! -- owns his will."*2* But he accepts the responsibility reverently and confidently: "I work in freedom wild, But work, as plays a little child, Sure of the Father, Self, and Love, alone."*3*
-- *1* `Individuality', l. 62. *2* `Individuality', l. 76. *3* `Individuality', ll. 89-91. --
Again, the province of poetry is pointed out, as in `Clover': "The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man;"*1* and in `The Bee': "Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile."*2* In `Corn',*3* too, the "tall corn-captain" "types the poet-soul sublime."
-- *1* `Clover', ll. 126-127. *2* `The Bee', ll. 40-42. *3* `Corn', l. 52 ff. --
But it is in his prose works that Lanier has treated the matter most at length, and to these I turn. In the first place, he insists that to be an artist one must know a great deal, a statement that would appear superfluous but for its frequent overlooking by would-be artists. Hence he is right in warning young writers: "You need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your poetry unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and saturated with at least the largest final conceptions of current science."* That Lanier strove to follow this precept, we have abundant evidence in his life and in his works; and I think that, if we remember his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy, and the variety of his knowledge. As additionally illustrative of the last, I may add that Lanier invented some improvements for the flute, and made a discovery in the physics of music that the Professor of Physics in the University of Virginia thought considerable.**
-- * `Gates', p. 29. ** See `West', p. 23. --
In the second place, Lanier thinks that a poet's knowledge of his art should be scientific. It was this that led him to write `The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is, "But the best conceptions cannot be, save where science and genius are." In `The English Novel' he declares that "not a single verse was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"* and fortifies his statement by Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, -- "For a good poet's made as well as born, And such wert thou." But Lanier clearly saw that no formal laws and no amount of scientific knowledge could alone make a poet, as appears from the motto above quoted, from the closing chapter of `The Science of English Verse', which tells us that the educated love of beauty is the artist's only law, and from this other motto, from Sir Philip Sidney: "A Poet, no industrie can make, if his owne Genius bee not carried unto it."
-- * `The English Novel', p. 33. --
In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful. This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage: "Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his work. For indeed we may say that he
-- *1* `Individuality', l. 62. *2* `Individuality', l. 76. *3* `Individuality', ll. 89-91. --
Again, the province of poetry is pointed out, as in `Clover': "The artist's market is the heart of man; The artist's price, some little good of man;"*1* and in `The Bee': "Wilt ask, `What profit e'er a poet brings?' He beareth starry stuff about his wings To pollen thee and sting thee fertile."*2* In `Corn',*3* too, the "tall corn-captain" "types the poet-soul sublime."
-- *1* `Clover', ll. 126-127. *2* `The Bee', ll. 40-42. *3* `Corn', l. 52 ff. --
But it is in his prose works that Lanier has treated the matter most at length, and to these I turn. In the first place, he insists that to be an artist one must know a great deal, a statement that would appear superfluous but for its frequent overlooking by would-be artists. Hence he is right in warning young writers: "You need not dream of winning the attention of sober people with your poetry unless that poetry and your soul behind it are informed and saturated with at least the largest final conceptions of current science."* That Lanier strove to follow this precept, we have abundant evidence in his life and in his works; and I think that, if we remember his environments, we must wonder at the vastness, the accuracy, and the variety of his knowledge. As additionally illustrative of the last, I may add that Lanier invented some improvements for the flute, and made a discovery in the physics of music that the Professor of Physics in the University of Virginia thought considerable.**
-- * `Gates', p. 29. ** See `West', p. 23. --
In the second place, Lanier thinks that a poet's knowledge of his art should be scientific. It was this that led him to write `The Science of English Verse', the motto of which is, "But the best conceptions cannot be, save where science and genius are." In `The English Novel' he declares that "not a single verse was ever written by instinct alone since the world began,"* and fortifies his statement by Ben Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, -- "For a good poet's made as well as born, And such wert thou." But Lanier clearly saw that no formal laws and no amount of scientific knowledge could alone make a poet, as appears from the motto above quoted, from the closing chapter of `The Science of English Verse', which tells us that the educated love of beauty is the artist's only law, and from this other motto, from Sir Philip Sidney: "A Poet, no industrie can make, if his owne Genius bee not carried unto it."
-- * `The English Novel', p. 33. --
In the third place, Lanier holds that a moral intention on the part of an artist does not interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work; that in art the controlling consideration is rather moral than artistic beauty; but that moral beauty and artistic beauty, so far from being distinct or opposed, are convergent and mutually helpful. This thesis he upholds in the following eloquent and cogent passage: "Permit me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement has been from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost. Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet if the lip have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a moral ugliness, that sculptor -- unless he be portraying a moral ugliness for a moral purpose -- may as well give over his marble for paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not accept his work. For indeed we may say that he