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Geoffrey Hill: Poetry, Criticism and Philosophy A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Geoffrey Hill: Poetry, Criticism and Philosophy Alex Pestell DPhil University of Sussex September 2011 2 Acknowledgements My thanks to Keston Sutherland, whose guidance, support, and meticulous feedback over the course of this thesis has been invaluable. My thanks also to Brian Cummings, who gave useful advice in the early stages of this project. I’m grateful to the staff at Leeds University Library for their help with the Geoffrey Hill archive. For their conversation, advice and good cheer over the course of this project thanks are due to Christoforos Diakoulakis, Alex Howard, Seda Ilter, Ben Jones, Michael Kindellan, Angelos Koutsourakis, Anthony Leaker, Peter Nicholls, Richard Parker, Ben Pestell, Karen Schaller, David Tucker, and Karen Veitch. Finally my thanks to my parents and my grandparents for their patience, encouragement and support. 3 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX ALEX PESTELL DPHIL GEOFFREY HILL: POETRY, CRITICISM AND PHILOSOPHY SUMMARY This thesis examines the role played by philosophy in the poetry and criticism of Geoffrey Hill. Despite countless references to philosophy throughout Hill’s critical authorship, there exists no study of any length on this vital aspect of his thought. Through close readings of his poetry, criticism, and archival material, I attempt to demonstrate that philosophy has played a more crucial role in Hill’s work than has hitherto been assumed. Hill’s sceptical attitude to philosophy is intimately connected with his understanding of poetry as a sensate form of cognition. My thesis examines the ways Hill’s poetry and criticism responds to the challenges imposed upon this scepticism by a tradition of philosophy that emphasises the importance of the aesthetic to its analyses of modernity’s contradictions. I argue that a tradition of Anglophone Idealist thinkers, from S.T. Coleridge, via T.H. Green and F.H. Bradley, to Gillian Rose, is of sustained relevance to Hill’s work, shaping the way he thinks about politics, ethics and literature. In particular, German Idealism’s attempts to negotiate universality and particularity via an emphasis on the aesthetic bases of critical thought lay the groundwork for an understanding of poetry as a mode of cognition. Reading Hill’s poetry from For the Unfallen to Oraclau/Oracles , I try to show the ways in which problems traditionally conceived of as philosophical can be cognised in prosody and syntax. In part a vindication of Hill’s elevation of poetry over philosophy, these readings also show the degree to which Hill’s ‘craft of vision’ is indebted to conceptual and aesthetic models supplied by philosophy. 4 Contents List of abbreviations ............................................................................................................... 5 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 6 1. ‘Vision’ as the domain of poetry .................................................................................... 7 2. Anglophone Idealism’s dissatisfaction with modernity ............................................... 15 3. Poetry’s dissatisfaction with modernity ....................................................................... 22 SECTION I: COLERIDGE ’S INFLUENCE ................................................................................ 36 Chapter 1: Imagination ..................................................................................................... 37 1. Lyric as diagnosis ......................................................................................................... 39 2. The imagination’s role in subjective aesthetic reflection ............................................. 45 3. Imagination and the common sense ............................................................................. 53 Chapter 2: The Drama of Reason ..................................................................................... 66 1. The ‘drama of reason’ .................................................................................................. 66 2. Coleridge’s aesthetics and literary criticism ................................................................ 78 3. Living Powers .............................................................................................................. 85 4. Sensus communis : a ‘decaying sense’ .......................................................................... 92 SECTION II: VICTORIAN IDEALISM AND OBJECTIVITY .................................................... 100 Chapter 3: Art of Judgement .......................................................................................... 101 1. The role of legislative metaphors in philosophical and poetic judgement ................. 105 2. What is Popular Philosophy? ..................................................................................... 113 3. Popular philosophy as impediment to poetic thought ................................................ 120 Chapter 4: ‘The strife of phrase’ .................................................................................... 130 1. Wavering thought ....................................................................................................... 130 2. What is a Bradleian poem? ........................................................................................ 140 3. Optional / obligatory music and its role in judgement ............................................... 144 4. Ephemeral thought ..................................................................................................... 157 SECTION III: WORDS AND THINGS ................................................................................... 170 Chapter 5: Performative Speech ..................................................................................... 171 1. The example of Ezra Pound ....................................................................................... 174 2. Speech-acts ................................................................................................................. 180 3. The diagnostic word in Hill, Pound, and Austin ........................................................ 184 4. Blindness and stultification ........................................................................................ 194 5. Words and things ....................................................................................................... 202 Chapter 6: Poetry and Value .......................................................................................... 214 1. Intrinsic value ............................................................................................................. 215 2. Civil Power and Intrinsic Value ................................................................................. 223 3. ‘In Memoriam: Gillian Rose’ ..................................................................................... 231 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 239 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 248 5 List of abbreviations C Canaan (London: Penguin, 1996) CCW Collected Critical Writings , ed. Kenneth Haynes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) CP Collected Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) LL The Lords of Limit (London: André Deutsch, 1984) O Oraclau / Oracles (Thame: Clutag Press, 2010) OS The Orchards of Syon (London: Penguin, 2002) SC Scenes from Comus (London: Penguin, 2005) SS Speech! Speech! (London: Penguin, 2001) T1 A Treatise of Civil Power (Thame: Clutag Press, 2005) T2 A Treatise of Civil Power (London: Penguin, 2007) TL The Triumph of Love (London: Penguin, 1999) WT Without Title (London: Penguin, 2006) 6 INTRODUCTION What follows is a study of the role philosophy plays in the work of Geoffrey Hill. Philosophy is often presented by Hill as ancillary or even antithetical to poetry. Poetry is, or ought to be, ‘simple, sensuous and passionate’: a matter of the instinctual apprehension of sensate particulars.1 By contrast, philosophy is suspected of flattening out the granular surface of lived experience in the name of a systematic model of this experience. Philosophy might offer coordinating perspectives in Hill’s work, as when F.H. Bradley is quoted in the epigraphs to Hill’s Collected Critical Writings and Without Title , or when Simone Weil stands at the head of ‘The Pentecost Castle’, but in the main its role in what Hill calls ‘the craft of vision’ – the effort to obtain critical purchase on objective truth – is downplayed. 2 Perhaps for this reason, critics have not yet produced any study, book chapter, article or monograph devoted to understanding Hill’s relationship to philosophy. Briefly, the argument in this thesis is not only that philosophy
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