Yvor Winters: the Critic As Moralist

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1972 Yvor Winters: the Critic as Moralist. Shirley Sternberg Fraser Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

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300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 A Xerox Education Company 72-28,342 FRASER, Shirley Sternberg, 1934- YVOR WINTERS: TOE CRITIC AS MORALIST. The Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, Ph.D., 1972 Language and L iteratu re, modem

University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan

SHIRLEY STERNBERG FRASER

A Dissertation

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

The Department of English

by Shirley Fraser B.S., The University of Texas, 1955 M.A., University of Houston, 1966 May, 1972 PLEASE NOTE:

Some pages may have

indistinct print.

Filmed as received.

University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company DEDICATION

To Dana acknowledgment

To acknowledge a debt is not to pay it but merely to admit that you owe it. With this in mind, I want to tender my deepest thanks to Dr. Donald E. Stanford, whose help in writing this dissertation has been invaluable.

I a ls o wish to thank Dr. John o liv e and Dr. John Wildman for their help and guidance and Dr. Lawrence Sasek, and

Dr. Nicholas canaday, for their participation in the project. My special thanks to Mrs. Donald E. Stanford for much-needed moral support.

i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENT...... i i

ABSTRACT ...... V

CHAPTER

I . YVOR WINTERS: THE CRITIC AS MORALIST ...... 1

Literary Moralism...... I Winters and Johnson...... 36

I I . WINTERS AND AQUINAS...... 57

I I I . WINTERS AND LYRIC POETRY...... 76

Romanticism...... 84 Deism...... 87 Determinism ...... 91 H ed o n ism ...... 93 C alvin ism ...... 94 Unitarianism ...... 96 C l a s s i c i s m ...... 98 F o r m ...... 100 S t y le...... 110 Balance and Control...... 123 Hart C r a n e...... 127 William Butler Yeats ...... 132 Wallace Stevens and Jones v e r y...... 139 Edwin A rlin gton Robinson ...... 148 T. Sturge Moore...... 155 Gerard Manly Hopkins ...... 158 T. S. Eliot ...... 165 Post-Symbolists...... 172 J . V. C unningham...... 179

IV. THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, A TISSUE OF IRRELEVANCES ...... 186

The Emperor and the T a ilo r s...... 191 The M inisters ...... 193 The Truth-Teller ...... 217

i i i TABLE OP CONTENTS ( c o n tin u e d )

Page

ABBREVIATIONS...... 222

LIST OP WORKS CONSULTED...... 223

VITA ...... 226

i v ABSTRACT

As a critic, Yvor Winters is an enigma. He is an absolutist in a relativist age; he insists on morality in literature in a century in which the term "moral" is all but pejorative. Yet, notwithstanding the controversial quality of his criticism, he attracts a growing number of f o llo w e r s .

Although many soundly approve winters' moral doctrine, little has been written to clarify it. Most of the work has been in defense of the man and his character just as most of the attacks have been leveled at Winters himself rather than at his criticism. The purpose of this dissertation is to furnish a foundation for understanding

Winters' critical doctrine, to show the moral-ethical basis from which he worked, to apply his ethics and pro cedures to specific poems and poets in order to demonstrate the internal consistency in Winters' criticism, and f in a l l y by a d isc u ssio n o f trends in modern c r itic is m to show that Winters' moralist criticism deserves more serious consideration than it has heretofore received.

The first chapter of the dissertation is concerned with the moral tradition in literature. The purpose of the chapter is twofold. First, Winters' definition of moralism is explained with emphasis on the important dis tinction between moralism and didacticism. While Winters sees didacticism as a technique external to the work of art, he believes that a poem achieves form through the poet's efforts to perfect a moral attitude toward a particular experience. in the second part of the chapter,

Winters' relation to the moral tradition as epitomized by

Plato, Sidney, Johnson, Arnold, Babbitt, and More, is discussed. The critical relationship between Dr. Johnson and Winters is explored at some length with the final observation that although Winters can be placed in the * moral tradition, he emerges ultimately, like Johnson, as a solitary figure belonging to no particular school.

Chapter Two involves a consideration of the moral- ethical basis of Winters' criticism. Winters says of morality: "It guides us toward the greatest happiness which the accidents of life permit; that is, toward the fullest realization of our nature in the Aristotelian and Thomistic sense." Winters' insistence on the balance between rational meaning and feeling, his belief that literature should enrich the moral temper, and his empha sis on absolute values reflect his admiration for Aquinas and Scholasticism. Yet, although his philosophical views are Thomistic, in religion he refers to himself as a reluctant theist.

v i Chapter Three involves the practical application of

Winters' moralist criticism. The first part of the chapter concerns the multi-faceted approach Winters' moralist position enables him to apply to the literary work, in volving such varied aspects as philosophy, form, style, and language. In the latter part of the chapter, all of these approaches are applied to specific poets and poems to demonstrate the internal consistency of Winters' critical p o s it io n .

The f in a l chapter approaches modern c r itic is m through the use of a fairy tale, "The Emperor's New

Clothes," demonstrating how much of today's criticism can be considered either apologist or fragmentist, The chapter contends that Yvor Winters' moralist criticism, contrary to the accusations of many of his critics, is in the mainstream of Anglo-American letters and his approach has much to o f fe r modern tim es.

Thus we return to the problem suggested at the beginning of the dissertation. is it possible that criticism based on a belief in absolute truths and morality can be relevant in an age of situational ethics and p h ilo so p h ic a l r e la tiv ism ? The growing number o f

Winters converts insist on an affirmative response. YVOR WINTERS: THE CRITIC AS MORALIST

And it is not always face, Clothes, or Fortune gives the grace; Or the feature, or the youth; But the Language, and the Truth.

Ben Jonson

Literary Moralism

In an age of ethical relativism a critic who de clares in favor of absolute values stands out as a rene gade, an upstart, to be virtually dismissed as being out of step with the times. Sometimes, however, a man creates such a reputation and produces such an important body of work that he cannot be easily dismissed as much as his defamers would wish it. Such a man is Yvor Winters who, in three major books, iii Defense of Reason, The Function of Criticism and Forms of Discovery, together with numerous essays, has taken the position that there are constant and absolute truths which govern the evaluation of experience.

In his first major book Jta Defense of Reason Winters takes up the problem of absolute values with regard to the judg ing of poetry.

Can one poem be regarded as better than another, he asks. Further, can one distinguish the qualities of good poetry from inferior poetry? Winters' position is that obviously all poems are not equal in quality. What then, he asks, makes one poem superior to another? If such a judgment is individual, Winters condemns us as relati vists, Emersonian mystics, or hedonists. If, however, there is some inherent quality which makes one poem superior to another, Winters declares: "... then we assume that constant principles govern the poetic experi ence, and . . . the poem (as likewise the judge) must be judged in relationship to those principles."1. Winters states his position clearly in Jta Defense of Reason: "The theory of literature which I defend . . . is absolutist.

I believe that the work of literature, in so far as it is valuable, approximates a real apprehension and communica tion of a particular kind of objective truth." Although he does not maintain the absolutist necessarily has ready access to such values, he asserts, "it is the duty of every man and of every society to endeavor as far as may be to approximate them" (pp. 1 0 -1 1 ).

Poetry, according to Winters is a "statement in words about a human experience" (p. 11). However, Winters believes it is much more than that for "a work of art is an e v a lu a tio n , a judgment, o f an ex p erien ce, and on ly in so far as it is that is it anything" (p. 334). Winters

■^Yvor Winters, Defense of Reason (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1947), p. 361. Hereafter cited as IDOR. declares in Forms of Discovery that "the end, the purpose of poetry, is the understanding of the human condition

. . . and that is the most important activity of the 2 human mind."

It is in the evaluation, the rational understanding of the experience, that the inherent goodness of the poem lies. For any two poets may deal with an identical sub ject. Yet, the resulting poems will differ because "the definition of each will not be a definition of the thing in itself . . . but, a definition by each poet of his relationship to the thing, and the definitions, though different, may be equally valid, and without our having recourse to any relativistic doctrine to justify them

. . ." (IDOR, p. 522). Thus, Winters declares his belief that the feeling expressed by the work should be the direct result of the artist's understanding of the human experience which is his subject.

If a poem is an evaluation of an experience, and if the quality of that evaluation has much to do with determining the value of the poem, then the poet who writes from a moral vision of the world must be, to the absolutist, superior to the poet who considers poetry a form of self-expression. Winters states his view of

2 Yvor W inters, Forms o f D iscovery (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1967), p. xix. Hereafter cited as FOD. expressivism succinctly in in Defense of Reason: "The doctrine of expressive form states that the poet is expressing his subject, and that the form of expression is determined by the subject matter. My belief, on the contrary, is this: that the poet is expressing his own understanding of his subject matter and the feelings properly motivated by that understanding; that the value of the poem depends on the quality of that understanding and the justness of the motivation" (p. 550), To Winters the goal of the literary figure is "to perfect a moral attitude toward that range of experience of which he is 3 aware." Thus Winters designates himself a moralist c r i t i c .

Now the term "moral" has been so bandied about by our age that it has often come to be regarded as a stiff necked Puritanical attitude insulting to mature people, in the literary sense, it has been applied to didactic works, which rigidly set out to inculcate certain doctrines or beliefs narrowly disguised in poetry, novels, etc.

Winters' definition of the term, however, does not fit these presumptions. He maintains that there are four theories of the nature and function of literature: the hedonistic, the romantic, the didactic, and the moralistic.

3Yvor Winters, "Poetry, Morality, and Criticism," in The C ritiq u e o f Humanism, ed. H artley C. Grattan (New York: Brewer and Warren, inc., 1930), p. 309. Being a self-avowed moralist, Winters takes exception to

the other three approaches.

His principal objection to the hedonistic approach

is that it separates art from experience. The result is

"it renders intelligible discussion of art impossible,

and it relegates art to the position of esoteric indul- 4 gence." To the hedonist, pleasure is an end in itself.

Thus, this approach is repugnant to the moralist, who,

while he believes happiness to be a worthwhile aim, does

not equate it with submersion into pleasure. Winters

considers the hedonistic approach "a search for intensity

of experience Artiich7 leads inevitably to an endless

pursuit either of increasing degrees of violence of

emotion or o f in c r e a sin g ly e lu s iv e and more nearly mean

ingless nuances, and ultimately to disillusionment with

art and with life" (IDOR, p. 5). What the hedonist lacks

is the balance and control which would enable him to eval

uate experience justly by its moral content. Because he

separates the artistic experience from life, the hedonist

is diametrically opposed to the moralist, who rejects a dichotomy between literature and life. As John Fraser comments: ". . . for Winters it was all life, all diffi- 5 cult, and all intensely serious."

4 Ib id .

5John Fraser, "Yvor Winters: The Perils of Mind," Centennial Review, 14, No. 4 (Fall 1970), 406. 6

Even more repugnant to Winters than the hedonistic

is the romantic theory of literature. While the hedonist

believes literature is a search for intensity of experi

ence (witness pater's desire to "burn with a hard gem

like flame") the romanticist believes, according to

Winters, "that the rational faculty is unreliable to the

point of being dangerous." Furthermore, Winters asserts

that within the hedonist, who is usually a relativist,

"there is often an illicit and veiled recognition of abso

lutism in his attempts to classify the various pleasures

as more or less valuable, not for himself alone but in

general," but "the Romantic is almost inescapably a

relativist" (IDOR, p. 11). One of the chief romantic

villains, according to Winters, is Emerson, who "believes

that all good comes from surrender to instinct and emotion;

all evil from the functioning of the rational faculty"

(IDOR, p. 477). To the moral absolutist, Emerson's rela

tivism, his negation of reason, make him a far more

dangerous adversary than Pater and even Eliot (both of whom Winters classifies as hedonists). "Emerson," accord

ing to Winters, "succeeded in focusing upon his romantic amoralism a national religious energy which had been

generated by a doctrine and by circumstances now equally

remote. And he was the most widely read and most pungent aphorist to appear in America since that other limb of the 7

Devil, Benjamin Franklin"(IDOR, p. 268). Thus it is

Emerson's influence which makes his relativist theories dangerous. Although the word "dangerous" may seem unnec essarily strong, one must keep in mind that Winters' theory of literature makes him an instrumentalist who sees

literature as a springboard to positive action. The virtue of poetry, he states in The Function of Criticism

is that "insofar as it is good . . . it enables us to achieve a more nearly perfect, and comprehensive being, to reduce that margin of spiritual privation which is g evil." The influence of literature, according to Winters, may be far more pervasive than most people realize. In

In Defense of Reason he states:

There is something supernatural about poetry, however, in a simple literal and theological sense .... In poetry one mind a c ts d ir e c t ly upon another, without regard to "natural" law, the law of chemistry or of physics. Furthermore, the action i s not on ly an a ctio n by way o f an id ea , but by way of emotion and moral attitude; it is both complex and elusive. Poetry is a medium by means of which one mind may to a greater or less extent take possession of another almost in the sense in which the term possession is used in demonology .... I f we en ter the mind o f a Crane, a Whitman, or an Emerson with our emotional faculties activated and our reason in abeyance, these writers may possess us as surely as demons were once supposed to possess the unwary, as surely as whitman possessed Crane, as surely as Whitman and Emerson were possessed by their predecessors. (p. 600)

Although Winters 1 dislike for the hedonistic and romantic theories of literature is generally understood

^Yvor Winters, The Function of Criticism (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1957), p. 180. Hereafter cited as FOC. by roost of his critics, his repudiation of didacticism is neither generally understood nor widely accepted.

It has been a theory, perpetuated by most critics, that moralism and didacticism are inseparable. Discussing

John Crowe Ransom in Iri Defense of Reason Winters comments

"Ransom cannot understand that poetry can have moral con tent except in the form of didacticism." Citing a passage from Ransom, W inters con tin u es: "This passage rests on the notion that the moral content of poetry can be only didactic; that the content which is not didactic must be aesthetic" (p. 504). Disagreeing sharply with

Ransom's position, Winters makes a clear distinction between didacticism and moralism.

Didacticism is a method, according to Winters, and is, therefore, external to the work of art. Because it is a method, it can just as easily be used to dis seminate relativistic doctrines as the absolutist values with which it is generally associated; a case in point,

Winters argues, is the writing of Emerson, Winters' chief relativist, who "preaches his doctrine directly, in purely didactic terms, and with intentions purely to explain and convince, as in ’The Problem' . ." (IDOR, p. 477).

Unlike didacticism, moralism is neither a method nor is it external to the work of art. The form of the poem grows out of the moral vision of the poet. In III Defense of Reason, Winters writes: "The creation of form

is nothing more nor less than the act of evaluating and

shaping (that is, controlling) a given experience" (p.

2 0 ). He goes on to comment: . . th is q u a lity , form,

is not something outside the poet, something 'aesthetic,'

and superimposed upon his moral content; it is essentially a part, in fact it may be the decisive part, of the moral

content, even though the poet may be arriving at the final

perfection of the condition he is communicating while he communicates it and in a large measure as a result of the act and technique of communication. For the communication

is first of all with himself; it is, as I have said, the

last refinement of contemplation" (p. 22). Thus Winters sees didacticism as a technique, a means of putting one's doctrinaire policies before the naive reader with the hope of causing him to react in a given manner. Moralism, on the other hand, is concerned with the spiritual control of the poet which takes form as a work of art. Didacti cism is an appendage to the work; moralism is the work.

Because didacticism is extraneous to the work,

Winters questions the validity of its inclusion in literature at all. If the purpose of literature is to teach useful precepts and to give explicit moral instruc tion, then couldn't these goals be better achieved by religion or ethics, he asks. His reply is decisive. "I 10 am not . . . setting up art as a substitute for religion 7 or formal ethics." By this statement and others like it

Winters disallows the didactic as inherently valuable to the work of art.

Although Winters considers didacticism's external quality one of the principal distinctions between it and moralism, still another major difference involves scope.

The didactic writer sees the world one way only and dis avows contrary views. it is, in fact, the object of his work to prove that the opposing views are indeed in error.

Winters, as moralist, finds this position far too narrow.

Although he rejects the views of many poets, he is never theless willing to concede their greatness. Cautioning the reader to beware of certain ideas, he refuses to dismiss the poetry, nonetheless, recommending it to his readers in spite of its philosophical attitudes. In In

Defense of Reason he writes: "A Very, a Traherne, or a

Blake, is a luxury which we can well afford so long as he refrains from making converts. Should he convert us all, he would certainly be destroyed along with us, or so, to u s, in our darkness i t must needs appear. But secure and unimpeded in our universe, which he deplores, he expresses one limited aspect of our spiritual life, an aspect which to express well, he must live fully" (p. 278). Winters admires poets who hold such widely divergent views as

7 Winters, "Poetry, Morality, and Criticism," p. 3 1 0 . the religious mysticism of Jones very and the atheistic hedonism of Wallace Stevens. The reputation of Jones

Very has been greatly improved by Winters' discovery of him and subsequent discussion in In Defense of Reason.

Winters thinks he has been unjustly neglected although

Winters writes that he is personally "at every turn un sympathetic with his position" (p. 269). With Wallace

Stevens' hedonism Winters is even more at odds. Yet, in spite of the fact that Winters believes Stevens' hedonism tainted much of his work, he states; "'Sunday Morning' may be the greatest American work of our century" (p.

447). Declaring himself opposed to the "Paterian hedonism" of the poem, he continues; "Now I am not, myself, a hedonist of any variety; my dislike for the philosophy is profound .... But I know th at h ed o n ists exist, and the state of mind portrayed in the poem seems proper to them, and moreover it seems beautifully por trayed. It is no more necessary that one be a hedonist in order to enjoy this particular poem than that one be a murderer in order to enjoy Macbeth /s ic7" (p. 4 7 6 ).

Obviously, Winters does not allow his opposition to Stevens' philosophy to alter his opinion of the poem.

He takes the position that although Stevens' view of the u n iverse in "Sunday Morning" is not id e n tic a l to h is own, it does express a moral attitude since "the imminence of 12 absolute tragedy is felt and recorded, the integrity of the feeling mind is maintained" (p. 448).

Winters' attitude toward didactic poetry is as ambivalent as his admiration for poets whose moral attitude differs from his own. For example, he condemns

William Blake for his thorough didacticism, finding his beliefs so foolish as to elicit no positive response from the reader. On the other hand, he asserts: "Blake's talent for poetic language, as we encounter it in a few short poems, is greater than that of almost any other poet in the romantic tradition" (FOD, p. 161).

In contrast, Winters, writing of a poem by

Gascoigne (the third of the poems called Memories) praises him for surpassing practical didacticism so that the poem becomes moral a n a ly s is . Keith McKean sums up

Winters' moral attitude, stating: "Here then is an ethical critic who does not insist on any particular ethical principles, and an ethical critic who also under stands that 'a treatise on poetry stops with the considera tion of the speculative judgment' as it appears in literature.

He is constantly concerned with the moral quality of the

Q art rather than with general ethical problems."

To recapitulate briefly, it is obvious that in a comparison of the scope of didacticism to what Winters

SKeith McKean, The Moral Measure of Literature (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1961), pp. 100-01. 13

calls moralism in literature, the didacticist assumes a

narrow position while the moralist accepts a wide range

of beliefs only insisting that the poem express a moral

attitude and not requiring that this attitude be an

expression of his own beliefs. Basically, one could dis

tinguish between didacticism and moralism by the difference

in the purpose of each. Didacticism uses the work of art

for instruction; moralism, for understanding.

in order to understand fully winters' moralist

position, it is necessary to place him in a suitable

framework. Thus, a brief look at the moralists who

preceded him seems in order. Critics discussing Winters

have placed him with such moral critics as Sidney, Johnson,

Arnold, Babbitt, and More, but often have failed to see

that Winters is not a member of a particular school, that his position distinguishes him from all the preceding

critics placing him rather of the tradition than in it.

Of all the foregoing critics winters bears the strongest relationship to Johnson, a relationship which w ill be discussed more fully at the end of the chapter.

Now it is not the purpose of this dissertation to compile a comprehensive literary history. Therefore, the discussion of the critics named w ill be necessarily brief, based solely on their positions in regard to literature and morality. For much of the discussion which follows I 14

am Indebted to K eith McKean*s thought-provoking study

The Moral Measure o f L itera tu re and to M. H. Abrams 1

comprehensive book The Mirror and the Lamp.

McKean begins his discussion of the literary

moralists with Plato, who, while primarily a philosopher,

was deeply interested in the relationship between litera

ture and life, certain aspects of the moralist approach

to literature can certainly be traced back to Plato.

M. H. Abrams, for example, avers: ". . . the proposition

that artistic excellence can only be the consequence of

moral excellence, was introduced by Plato .... The

doctrine was readily correlated with the view that art 9 is a vehicle of moral instruction . . . ." Furthermore,

the emphasis on rationality and ethical behavior as qualities to be promoted by the writer stems from Plato and continues through the moral tradition. However,

Plato's preference for the philosopher over the poet, because he believes the philosopher has a deeper aware ness of truth, separates him from the literary moralists who followed him. Plato, concerned with the power of poetry to corrupt, judges it by its moral-ethical value.

In Phaedras he insists on poetry as a vehicle for pro moting worthwhile principles, citing Socrates' definition

^M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, W. W. Norton, Inc., 1958), p. 229. of a good man as one "who thinks that in the written work there is necessarily much which is not serious, and . . . neither poetry nor prose . . . is of any great value if they are only recited in order to be believed and not with any view toward criticism or instruction."^

in The Republic Book II he favors censorship of literature because of its power to possess the individual. "...

The poet . . . may say that the wicked are miserable be cause they require to be punished, and are benefited by receiving punishment from God; but that God being good is the author of evil to any one is to be strenuously denied.

. . . Such a fiction is suicidal, ruinous, impious.

Thus Plato believes art is to be sacrificed to the good of the s t a t e .

To Plato, the philosopher is on a higher level than the poet mainly because he can rise above the particular to the universal, thus grasping the real nature of truth while the poet, on the other hand, deals only with the human passions. Since Plato contends that virtue demands our control of the passions which poetry by its very nature excites, he believes that poetry can have a corrosive effect on morality. McKean sees ambiguity in

^Benjamin jowett, trans., "phaedras," The Dialogue of Plato in Great Books of the western World, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago, Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1955), V II, 140.

il-Jowett, "The Republic: Book II," The Dialogue of Plato, 322. 16 Plato’s attitude toward poetry because of the sensitivity

of the philosopher to its charm, but, he continues:

"Plate seldom pays any attention to what might be called

the poem itself. He is, rather, concerned with the

effect on society and he wants the poets to join his

fight for justice. He wants them to use their great power

to strengthen man's rational side, to teach virtue, and to 12 encourage religion." While the moralist critics have many beliefs in common with Plato, it is easy to see that

Winters takes exception to Plato's belief about the purpose of poetry. His comment, quoted previously, stresses that if poetry's function is to teach moral- ethical precepts, literature becomes a poor substitute for religion or philosophy. While Winters would not argue with Plato's emphasis on ethical-moral values and his uniting of literature and life, he places the value of literature not on its benefit to the state but to the state of mind.

Like Plato, Sir Philip Sidney sees literature as promoting ethical values, in his famous work The Apologie for Poetry Sidney follows the Horatlan formula that the purpose, the end of poetry, is to delight and instruct.

In The Mirror and the Lamp, Abrams p o in ts out: "To

Sidney, poetry, by definition, has a purpose—to achieve

12McKean, p. 26. certain effects in an audience, it imitates only as a means to the proximate end of pleasing, and pleases, it turns o u t, on ly as a means to the u ltim ate end o f teach ing for 'right poets' are those who 'imitate both to delight and teach, and delight to move men to take that goodnes in hande, which without delight they would flye as from 13 a stranger. . . However, while Plato sets the philosopher above the poet, Sidney takes the opposite position. The philosopher, Sidney declares, uses argu ments so abstract and so generalized that no one benefits directly. At the other end of the spectrum is the his torian, who is so particularized, so concerned with actualities, that he fails to be universal. The poet, on the other hand, combines the best attributes of both the philosopher and the historian in that he is both particular and universal. He is neither limited to actual events nor is he vague and abstract. He is, con sequently, able to picture the ideal and make virtue a p p ea lin g . Abrams p o in ts out: "To the overwhelming majority of Renaissance critics, as to Sir Philip Sidney, the moral effect was the terminal aim, to which delight 14 and emotion were auxiliary." Thus, while Plato deni grates literature's power over the emotions, Sidney sees

1 3 Abrams, pp. 14-15.

14Ibid., p. 16. 18

the power as a quality which, according to McKean "makes

it /poetry7 an effective force for good."^

With Samuel Johnson I shall only deal perfunctorily

at this time because of the more lengthy discussion of

his literary relationship with Winters which w ill close

the chapter. McKean, discussing the great critic, empha-

sizes Johnson's belief that the function of literature is

to promote the good life. Johnson sees no dichotomy between the poet and his life (although he often states

a preference for one or the other) nor does he see, according to McKean, a "real conflict of interest between

the moralist and the critic." In fact, "he was just as apt to judge literature by moral standards as he was to L6 measure conduct by the same principles." pleasure, according to Johnson, does not justify art. It is the purpose of literature to instill positive ethical values.

Commenting on paradise Lost in his "Life of Milton,"

Johnson writes: "History must supply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by dramatic energy, and diversify by retrospection and anticipation? morality must teach him the exact bounds and different shades of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life he has

l5McKean, p. 26.

16Ibid., p. 36. to learn the discriminations of character and the ten- 1 7 dency of the passions. . . . " Thus Johnson's instru mentalist view of art sets the poet the task of using the basic narrative in order to promote ethical values, in his "Preface to Shakespeare" Johnson uses the Horatian formula to comment on the fu n ction o f lite r a tu r e : "The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to 18 instruct by pleasing." But Johnson goes even further than Horace with his statement: ". . . it is always a 19 writer's duty to make the world better. ..." These are the words of a true moralist.

Like the literary moralists who preceded him#

Matthew Arnold judges the greatness of literature by moral-ethical standards, in "The Study of Poetry" he declares: ". . . if we conceive thus highly of the destinies of poetry, we must also set onr standard for poetry high, since poetry, to be capable of fulfilling such high destinies, must be poetry of a high order of excellence." insisting, as did Plato before him, that poetry must be a vehicle for truth, he adds: "In poetry, which is thought and art in one, it is the glory, the

17Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck H ill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), I, 170. 1 8 Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Poems, and Selected Prose,ed. Bertrand H. Bronson (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1958), p. 245.

19Ibid., pp. 249-50. 20

eternal honour, that charlatanism shall find no entrance

. . . ." Arnold sees poetry as a criticism of life, which he suggests: "... w ill be of power in pro

portion as the poetry conveying it is excellent rather

than inferior, sound rather than unsound or half-sound,

true rather than un-true or half-true."20 Thus he shares with Winters and the other literary moralists the idea

that the moral value of a poem is an inherent quality of the poem itself. The poem, growing out of a moral

structure, becomes the vehicle for producing better men.

In his essay on Wordsworth, Arnold writes: "... the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life—to the question: How to

l i v e ." 21

Although Arnold believes that poetry has moral value, it must be noted here that Arnold's position, like that of Winters, should not be confused with the didactic.

McKean comments: "... Arnold disapproves of narrow and explicit moralizing. In his essay on Wordsworth (1879), for example, he maintains that when Voltaire says that

'no nation has treated in poetry moral ideas with more

20 Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry," Essays in Criticism, 2nd series (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd” 1879), p . 3 . 21 Matthev/ Arnold, "Wordsworth," Essays in C riti cism, 2nd series, p. 102. 21

energy and depth than the English nation', he was not

suggesting that the English excel in didactic poems,

but rather that they excel in the noble and profound

application of ideas to life under the conditions fixed 22 by the laws of poetic beauty and poetic truth." Two

qualities which great poetry must possess, according to

Arnold, are truth and high seriousness, up to t h is

point, he is in complete agreement with the moralists

who preceded him. Where Arnold deviates from his pre

decessors is in his belief that it is the destiny of

poetry to supplant religion and philosophy. None of the

other moralists take such an extreme position although

they do not divorce poetry from religious-philosophical

concerns.

Continuing the moralist tradition are the two

critics with whom Yvor Winters is most often associated by others: Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. A dis

cussion of Babbit and More necessarily must involve the

movement v a rio u sly c a lle d neo-humanism or merely humanism.

In Rousseau and Romanticism Babbitt sets up the criteria

for humanism. Like the moralist critics before him, he

calls himself an absolutist because of the association he believes exists between ethical values and fixed beliefs.

He places strong emphasis on the idea of proportion, which,

22Ibid., p. 100. he insists, "is just as fundamental in humanism as is 23 humility in religion." This sense of proportion is what Babbitt likes to call "decorum," which he declares 24 is "the supreme virtue of the humanist." McKean de fines the term, in the sense that Babbitt and More use it, as a type of Aristotelian mean, but he qualifies the definition by pointing out that the thinking of both men is so dominated by religious dualism that balance and control become synonymous with suppressing the evil side 25 of human In Rousseau and Romanticism Babbitt i. ■=' jts on an intimate relationship between religion and humanism, declaring that humanism cannot get along without religion because "the whole ethical life of man has its 26 roots in humility," an obviously Christian virtue.

Humanism, according to B ab b itt, bears strong i d e n t i f i c a tion with classicism also. He writes: "The very heart of the classical message . . . is that one should aim first of all not to be original, but to be human, and that to be human one needs to look up to a sound model and imitate it. The imposition of form and proportion upon one's expansive impulses which results from the process of imitation is, in the true sense of that much abused

33lrving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919), p. 116. 24 Ibid., p. 380.

^McKean, p. 126.

26Babbitt, p. 380. 23 27 word, culture.”

Babbitt and More insist that art, like life, must

be dealt with from an ethical center. Winters has fre

quently been associated with the humanists because he

shares certain creeds with them. Like Winters, Babbitt

makes the distinction between the moral and the didactic.

In Rousseau and Romanticism, Babbitt refers to didacticism 28 as a "caricature of high seriousness." He emphasizes

the point that purely ethical art is free from preaching.

Using drama as an example, he points out that while the

quality of the characters is determined by their moral

choices, ethical values emerge through the characters 29 themselves rather than from any explicit moralizing.

He thus maintains, as does Winters, that there is a

difference between ethical perceptiveness and "mere

didacticism.

S till another point of agreement between Winters and the humanists is their belief that criticism should be evaluative. McKean comments: "They all agree that

the real purpose of literary scholarship and cricitism

is to help us judge the art . . . they never dodge the

27I b id ., p. 64.

28I b i d . , p. 21.

29I b i d . , p. 125.

30I b i d . , p. 205. 24 31 final responsibility of judgment." Winters' position

as an evaluative critic will be further explored in

Chapter III.

The humanists share with Winters a common approach

to literature as a history of ideas although the emphasis

is not the same. As McKean sees it, Babbitt is involved

in the social effects of idea; More, in the relationship between the artist and his work; Winters, in the way the 32 ideas are brought under balance and control by the artist.

Finally, all share an intense dislike for roman

ticism. In the "Preface" to Rousseau and Romanticism

Babbitt states that his overall objection to the movement

is basically in the results. "The supreme maxim of the ethical positivist (which Babbitt considers himself) is: 33 By their fruits shall ye know them." The principal fruit of romanticism, according to Babbitt, is moral

lassitude. The romanticist, says Babbitt, comes to no understanding of life, is aware of no universal truths.

While the classicist is concerned with the eternal veri ties, the romanticist is enamored of the unique, the strange, the grotesque. Romanticism,with its belief in instinct and impulse as the guiding forces of human behavior, and

31McKean, p. 131.

32Ibid., p. 129.

33Babbitt, p. xvi. 25

science, with its emphasis on determinism, together deprive man of his humanity, says Babbitt, "for man becomes human only insofar as he-exercises moral choice. Winters' attitude toward romanticism, which owes much to the thinking of Irving Babbitt, w ill be explored more fully in Chapter III.

In summary, because W inters shares c e r ta in views with Babbitt and More: the stress on ethics and morality, the distinction between didacticism and moralism, the history of ideas approach to literature (although Winters uses many others), the conviction that the critic must exercise evaluative judgment, and a basic distrust of romanticism, many critics insist on calling him a humanist. Winters states his objection strenuously to being so categorized in I_n Defense of Reason: "I do not consider myself one of the Humanists: I disagree with

Babbitt on too many counts to do so, though I admire him, and have learned a good deal from him; and Babbitt's colleagues have always appeared to me to be worth very little indeed"(p. 56). One of Winters' principal objec tions to the movement is his belief that it is non- literary. Writing in The Critique of Humanism, he insists that the movement deludes itself by pretending to deal with literature and declares that humanist ’’bugaboos are largely

^ I b id ., p. 262. 26 35 a journalistic sideshow." With this estimate McKean

agrees, pointing out: "Babbitt's literary criticism is

marred by long discussions of socialism, education,

President Wilson, labor unions, Christian Science, or 36 women's suffrage." Babbitt, the literary critic, says

McKean, is inextricable from Babbitt, the social critic .^

While Winters finds the ethical code of the

humanists sound, he argues that they frequently allow

themselves to fade into pure abstractions, into what he 3 8 and Tate condemn as "wisdom in a vacuum." Thus, he argues that humanists deal basically with ethical theory

in its most abstract sense as opposed to the true literary

critic, who applies moral-ethical values to literature.

This concern with abstractions, says Winters, has the effect of removing the humanist from life. "One's objection to the Humanists," he adds, "is not to their humanism but to their lack of it; one cannot read many of their volumes without being overwhelmed with a sense 39 of their spiritual bankruptcy."

An individual discussion of Babbitt and More w ill

^^Winters, "Poetry, Morality, and Criticism," p. 324.

3^McKean, p. 68.

37Ibid., p. 50.

88Winters, "Poetry, Morality, and Criticism," p. 331.

39Ibid., p. 333. reveal the relationship of Winters to this very impor

tant segment of the moralist tradition. Babbitt,

following other moralist critics, sees literature as a

potential force for good or evil. Basic to his ideas is

the principle he calls "the inner check, " a permanent

ethical element in the world of flux. It is the inner

check which acts as a curb on unleashed impulses and

"expansive desire" and invests the individual with a

sense of the importance of absolute values. Thus the

inner check is a power for good, intimately associated

with the individual's ability to control his baser nature.

Although it has been compared to one of Winters' funda

mental moral criteria, control, McKean sees an important

distinction between the two ideas. He points out that

Babbitt's inner check concerns the control of evil by

moral choice, whereas the control that Winters advocates

has to do with the proper balance between rationality

and em otion.W inters believes that Babbitt's insistence

on the inner check (which he defines as a religious

conscience) in Rousseau and Romanticism has marred the book. He argues in ^n Defense of Reason that because the

source of the inner check is basically religious it pro

vides no rational structure from which the critic can

effectively operate. Thus Babbitt's literary interpretations

40McKean, p. 126. 29

praises Baudelaire’s treatment of his subject matter as

both sensitive and perceptive. Winters feels that it is

not only the subject matter but the evaluative handling

of it which is important.

In The Moral Measure of Literature, Keith McKean

comments that "if Winters is similar to any of the human

ists, he is closer to Paul Elmer More than he is to the 41 others . . . . " If this is so, it is obvious that

Winters feels little if any kinship with the humanists at a l l .

In his study "Paul Elmer More: A Critic in Search of Wisdom," Austin Warren puts his finger directly on

Winters' principal objection to More. Warren calls More a "generalist" rather than a specialist, because More ranges far afield from the literary spectrum, considering 42 the panorama of liberal knowledge his goal. Articu

lating this idea in his Shelburne Essays More writes:

Literary criticism is, indeed, in this sense only the specific exercise of a faculty which works in many directions. All scholars, whether they deal with history, or sociology, or philosophy, or language, or, in the narrower use of the word, literature, are servants of the critical spirit, insofar as they transmit and interpret and mold the sum of experience from man to man and from generation to generation. Might not one even say

41McKean, p. 99.

^Austin warren, "Paul Elmer More: A Critic in Search of Wisdom," Southern Review, 5, No. 4 (October 1969), 1092. 30

that at a certain point criticism becomes almost identical with education, and that by this standard we may judge the value of any study as an instrument of education and may estimate the merit of any special presentation of that study. 3

Winters, primarily a man of letters who has made the study of literature his life's work, refuses to regard

More's broad interpretation of the critic as a basis for considering the humanist an expert on literature.

Although More is related to Babbitt as a literary humanist, there are certain areas in which the two differ considerably. Warren suggests one major difference:

More's dependency on the supernatural which causes him to move from the "common ground he had shared with Babbitt 44 to Platonism and Christian Platonism." McKean agrees, pointing out: "While Babbitt shied away from revelation,

More longed for religious guidance and found solace and comfort in submission to God." Citing an argument between the two, McKean recalls that at one time Babbitt A C accused More of being a "Jesuit in disguise." J While

Babbitt insists on an intimate association between human ism and religion, More goes further, removing the inner check from human to divine control. McKean explains More's

43Paul Elmer More, "Criticism," Shelburne Essays, 7th series (New York: George P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), p. 244.

44Warren, 1092.

45McKean, p. 71. 31

p o sitio n : "... the one is God, and the inner check is

His power, and great art w ill somehow reflect those

eternal truths.1,48

While Babbitt's chief approach to literature

borders on the history of ideas in the social sense,

More's interest often takes a biographical turn. That is,

he sees strong association between the artist and the work

of art. Praising the work of Charles Lamb, for example,

he heaps p ra ise a ls o on Lamb, the man. i f he condemns

Wordsworth's poetry, he also condemns Wordsworth, the

poet. "The illusion of the nature worshipper and the

deception of the humanitarian spring indeed from the same

substitution of reverie for judgment, and it is worthy

of remark that Wordsworth, who mused so pathetically on

the lot of the dalesmen about him, had no power of

entering into their individual lives and was commonly

distrusted by them."4^ He accuses Wordsworth of having a "low physical vitality, which made him shrink from action, joined to a troubled moral sense, which sought ease o f con scien ce from communion w ith a p a ssiv e unmoral 48 nature." Like Babbitt and Winters, he condemns roman ticism but he personalizes his attack,referring to

46Ibid., p. 73.

4^paul Elmer More, "Wordsworth," Shelburne Essays, 7th series, p. 39.

48Ibid., p. 44. 32

Rousseau's "demonic personality" and labelling him the

"foe of convention# betrayer of sacred trust# morbid self-analyst ending with fixed hallucinations of a con- 49 spiracy of society against him." Thus, it is obvious why More's criticism is inclined to take a far more p erson al turn than does B a b b itt's . Since, as Warren suggests, More's deepest concern is with understanding the nature of man, he is naturally as concerned with the maker o f poems as he is w ith the poems th em selves.

in the tradition of the literary moralists. More considers literature a criticism of life. He writes:

". . .in literature more manifestly than anywhere else, life displays its infinitely varied motives and results; and their practice is always to render literature itself more consciously a criticism of life."^ He sees the function of the critic as the upholding of absolute values in a world o f flu x . "... the representatives of the critical spirit, by their very lack of warping originality, by their endeavor to separate the true from the false, the complete from the onesided, stand with the great conserva tive forces of human nature, having their fame certified by the things that endure."51’

AQ Paul Elmer More, "Rousseau," Shelburne Essays, 6th series, p. 236.

50More, "Criticism," p. 218.

51-Ibid., p. 220. 33

While both McKean and Warren w i l l admit that More

is more interested in aesthetics than is Babbitt, both

dismiss his attempts to include discussion of literary

theory in his works as second rate at best. McKean

scathingly refers to More's attempt to discuss literary

theory as "adjectival evaluation" and accuses him of

failing to support his analyses with any evidence. "it

is typical of More's method, therefore, to quote a bit

of verse he likes, and then glide away from it blowing 52 a d j e c tiv a l k is s e s . . . . " Warren comments: "More's qualifications for writing criticism did not include

either a knowledge of aesthetics or of literary theory.

In The Critique of Humanism Winters' comment on More's criticism of Arthur Symons' poetry reflects a similar

lack of confidence in his critical ability. "It is obvious that what I am demanding of Mr. More would lead to a 'subjective' evaluation of a body of experience. Un fortunately, that is the only kind of evaluation of experience, literary or non-literary, that isultimately possible, and one has to have the training as well as the 54 courage to make it." Instead of literary analysis More's chief interest is in moral analysis. Unlike Winters, More is incapable of combining the two.

^^McKean, p. 81.

53Warren, p. 1103.

^^Winters, "Poetry, Morality, and Criticism," p. 320. (The underlining is mine.) 34

What the inner check is to Babbitt, dualism is

to More. McKean defines More's dualism as "essentially a religious principle involving a distinction between

the divine and the human, the Christian soul and the 55 flesh." Like Babbitt with his inner check, More

insists that dualism is a primary concern of poetry affecting it vitally, even in the form itself.

It was stated earlier that Winters is of the moralist tradition rather than in it. Since the dis tinction is rather important, it seems best to examine the qualities that characterize the literary moralists with a special view to seeing in what respect Winters either shares their beliefs or differs with them.

First, all are, of course, committed to the belief that great literature promotes moral-ethical behavior.

Plato is excepted from this group, but the distinction is not terribly important because he is essentially philosopher rather than literary man. Winters would not disagree with this position, but his use of the term moral (explained earlier) is much broader. That is, he uses the word more to describe an accurate rational and just evaluation of an experience than do the others, who apply i t on a more s o c io lo g ic a l framework.

Secondly, the literary moralists, for the most part, judge literary merit on the basis of their own

55McKean, p. 82. beliefs, in effect what they say is: if the work of art

demonstrates the truth of my own philosophic position, it

is beneficial and good; if not, it is harmful and bad. As

we have seen, Winters has greatly modified this position

by praising highly the work of people like Wallace Stevens,

Jones Very, and T. Sturge Moore, while still disagreeing with their philosophical positions.

Thirdly, the literary moralists almost always

place the emphasis on ideas rather than on aesthetics.

As a result, they are inclined, for the most part, to ignore

the structure and style of the work of art in favor of

describing its ethical-sociological implications. Winters

too places a high value on ideas, but he cannot be accused of ignoring the structural or technical qualities of the work. Very conscious of literary theory, he often devotes

large sections of his writing to metrical analysis and

matters of form and style.

Most of the literary moralists see the function of

literature as closely connected to religion and philosophy.

As has already been noted, Winters does not believe that

literature should attempt to replace other humanist disciplines; rather, he sees literature as acting in con junction with them.

Finally, all the literary moralists insist on criticism as an act of evaluation. With this position, 36

Winters is in complete agreement.

Winters and Johnson

Although winters' moralist position tends to sepa

r a te him from the oth er lite r a r y m o r a lists, a more de

tailed discussion of his relationship with Samuel Johnson

produces some interesting correspondences. Johnson, like

Winters, has always been considered sui generis. One may

become frustrated or angry with Johnson's criticism but,

like that of Winters, it is not easily dismissed. Winters

has been broadly referred to as a Johnsonian by critics,

but no one has ever sought in detailed analysis to explain

why.

Winters has a great deal of admiration for Johnson

as critic, lavishing on him very high praise in In

Defense of Reason. He writes: "The number of people

capable of doing valuable work in literary criticism is

very small. A great critic, indeed, is the rarest of all

literary geniuses . . . perhaps the only critic in English who deserves the epithet is Samuel Johnson" (p. 565).

There are a marked number o f s im i l a r i t i e s between

the two critics, particularly in their attitudes and approaches to literature. Like Winters, Johnson cannot be totally identified with the age in which he lived. In

Samuel Johnson and the Life of Writing, Paul Fussell comments: "in his commitment to the public and social

obligations of the writer, his feeling for the writer’s

duty to redeem society by having a rhetorical impact

upon it, Johnson seems to detach himself from his own

time to adhere either to the Renaissance Christian tra

dition of Walton or Herbert, or —curiously—to the Vic-

torian activist tradition of Wells or Butler or Shaw."

Johnson takes strong exception to one of the principal

ideas of his age, the belief in the great chain of being

as expounded by Pope in his Essay on Man, with its re

sulting Shaftesburian philosophy of happiness, "Whatever

is, is right."

Reviewing Soame jenyn's essay "A Free Inquiry into

the Nature and Origin of Evil," Johnson writes: ". . .

it appears how little reason those who repose their

reason upon the scale of being have to triumph over them who recur to any other expedient of solution, and what difficulties arise on every side to repress the rebellions of presumptuous decision. Nor can Johnson be accused of smugness and pomposity, two descriptive terms often associated with the neoclassical age, when he discovers

in "The vanity of Human Wishes" that a ll we strive for,

C C. Paul Fussell, Samuel Johnson: The Life of Writing (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 94.

5^Johnson, Rasselas, pp. 198-199. all we hope is vain. One can, according to Johnson, choose only Christian acceptance and endurance.

Yet, although neither Johnson nor Winters sees man as perfectible, both are moral absolutists, Paul

Alkon, alluding to Johnson's absolutism, writes: "it is impossible to overlook Johnson's explicit assumption that all systems of 'wisdom or piety' must ground their

CO utility upon a bedrock of immutable truth." Johnson's position as absolutist is evidenced in his own words:

"Whether we provide for a c tio n or co n v ersa tio n , whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong . . .

Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, 59 but we are geometricians only by chance . . . ."

His absolutist position, however, is mitigated by his belief that moral perfection is unattainable, perhaps the best evidence can be found in Rasselas. Believing it possible to discover the best way to live, Rasselas, guided by the philosopher, imlac, is doomed to dis appointment. The philosophy of the Stoic sounds worth while, but the Stoic himself cannot practice what he

58 Paul Alkon, Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), p. 4.

59Johnson, Lives, I. 39 preaches, dissolving into despair over the death of his daughter. The meditations of the hermit, the life of carefree young bachelorhood, the joys of pastoral existence

— all are flawed because of man's basic problem: he is human. The seekers after Utopian existence ultimately return to the world of man after finding perfection un attainable .

Winters too, whose position as absolutist has already been delineated, finds man incapable of perfection.

In fact, Emerson's belief in man's perfectibility con stitutes one of Winters' chief objections to the transcendentalist. In l£ Defense of Reason, he accuses Emerson of a philosophic position which teaches "that through surrender to impulse man w ill not only achieve the good life but will achieve also a kind of mystical union with

D iv in ity ..." (p. 8). Thus, Winters, quoting Allen Tate, argues: "in Emerson, man is greater than any idea, and being the over-Soul is potentially perfect; there is no struggle because—I state the Emersonian doctrine, which is very slippery, in its extreme terms—because there is no possibility of error. There is no drama in human character, because there is no tragic fault" (p. 54).

Although Johnson and Winters agree that man is not perfectible, each takes the position that it is preferable to strive for moral perfection rather than to accept a 40

determinist view of life, in Samuel Johnson and Moral

Discipline, Paul Alkon states: "Johnson always insisted

that we are morally accountable for our actions. Although

quick to appreciate the force of mitigating circumstances

as well as the very real limitations upon freedom of agency,

he was nevertheless strongly opposed to all doctrines which 60 affirm complete social or psychological determinism."

Alkon contends that Johnson had to reject determinism before he could consider "moral discipline of the mind."

In order to avoid becoming "slaves to external circum

stances" Johnson felt we must come to terms with experi- 61 ence. winters'philosophical beliefs also are strongly anti-deterministic. Defining "determinism" as "that theory of the universe which holds that the whole is a single organism, pursuing a single and undeviating course which has been predestined by God or determined by its own nature," he expresses his dislike for the doctrine linking

it with romanticism, another theory he detests. "it is natural that deterministic and Romantic theories should coincide, for Romanticism teaches the infinite desirability of automatism and determinism teaches the inevitability of automatism. Determinism is Romanticism in a disillusioned mood" (IDOR, p. 9). Determinism, in removing from man the

60Alkon, pp. 117-18.

^Ibid., p. 26. 41

responsibility for his own actions and thus his free

w ill, destroys his belief in morality leaving him with

little choice but to function as an animal. Since both

Winters and Johnson consider man's ability to reason as

one of his highest moral virtues, such a position is

obviously indefensible to them.

Alkon points out: "Johnson thought of reason, in

so far as it serves to check the imagination, as the

guardian of morality .... Truly rational conduct, as

opposed to visionary and impractical schemes on the one

hand or possible but depraved projects on the other, is

above all else moral conduct. Reason, in Johnson's

opinion, impels us not only towards what is practical, 62 but towards what is ethical. . . 11 Johnson stated this belief specifically in Rambler, No. 8, writing: "He,

therefore, that would govern his actions by the laws of

virtue, must regulate his thoughts by those of reason."

The title alone of Winters ' book J[n Defense of

Reason would be sufficient evidence of his belief in

the primacy of reason. Winters demands a rational con

tent in poetry, taking the position that without it no work can succeed. Defining the artistic process as one of "moral evaluation," Winters contends that the poet's attempt to understand experience must be stated in

62Alkon, p. 72. 42 rational terms (p. 464). He insists: "The rational con tent cannot be eliminated from words; consequently the rational content cannot be eliminated from poetry. It is there. if it is unsatisfactory in itself, a part of the poem is unsatisfactory; the poem is thus damaged beyond argument" (IDOR, p. 364). Thus Johnson and Winters both see a relationship between reason and morality.

Aside from the a t tit u d e s Johnson and W inters share about absolutism, moral perfection, determinism, and rationality, there are also a number of similarities in their approaches to literature.

Both see history as having a vital effect on the work of a poet but believe that the great poet goes beyond his own age to write for all time in moral terms. In his biography of Milton, Johnson writes: "History must supply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which we must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by drama tic energy, and diversity by retrospection and anticipa tion; morality must teach him the exact bounds and

C. * 3 different shades of vice and virtue. . . ." In his

"Preface to Shakespeare" he declares that the critic too must function within a historical framework. "Every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared

^Johnson, Lives, I, 170. 43 64 with the state of the age in which he lived. . .

W inters makes the same point in ill Defense o f

Reason, averring: "I do not believe . . . that the his

tory of literature can be grasped unless one has a criti

cal understanding of it; but it seems to me equally

obvious that a critical understanding is frequently quite

impossible unless one knows a good deal of history" (p.

565). A practical example of Winters' application of the

history of ideas to literature can be found in his dis

cussion of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. It is the

Puritan belief, says Winters, that men were sharply divided into two groups, the saved and the damned, which

immediately provided Hawthorne with the best mode of presenting his tale. Winters sees The Scarlet Letter as an allegorized version of Puritanism. Thus, Hester becomes Hawthorne's representation of the repentant sinner, while Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are the half- repentant and unrepentant sinners. Winters goes on to say: "The method of allegorization is that of the Puri tans themselves; the substance of the allegory remained in a crude form a part of their practical Christianity in spite of their Calvinism, just as it remained in their non-theological linguistic forms, just as we can see it in the language of the best poems of so purely and

64Johnson, Rasselas, p. 258. 44

mystically Calvinistic a writer as Jones very* a living

language related to a living experience* but overflowing

the limits of Calvinistic dogma ..." (IDOR, pp. 168-69).

Thus Puritanism itself provides the form for the work.

Although both Johnson and Winters believe that a knowledge

of the history of ideas is fundamental to the understanding

of literature, both believe great writers capable of

transcending time.

This insistence on the universal quality of great

literature leads both Johnson and Winters to stress the

value of generalizing. Johnson states his position in

R a s se la s :

"The business of a poet*" said imlac, "is to examine* not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the strea k s o f the tu lip * or describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest. He is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such prominent and striking features, as recall the original to every mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations* which one may have remarked, and another have neglected, for those characteristics which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness . . he must dis regard present laws and opinions and rise to general and transcendental truths . . . . " 5

In his biography of Cowley, he writes: "Great thoughts are always general* and consist in positions not limited by exceptions* and in descriptions not descending to m inuteness.1,66

65Johnson, Rasselas, pp. 528-29.

^Johnson, Lives, I, 21. 45

Winters defends the same position in The Function of Criticism, stating:

The important thing is not action in itself, but the understanding of action. And I respectfully submit that such understanding can be communicated in general terms, and without the details of a particular story .... I see no reason why the poet should not be as free to generalize directly from what he has seen as the theologian or philosopher .... For the past two hundred and fifty years, it has been common to assume that abstract language is dead language, that poetry must depict particular a c tio n s .... But these assumptions are false . . . • (p • 61)

Because both critics emphasize the importance of ethical values, they share the belief that a great poem must lend new insight to a subject of universal signifi cance. Thus, one of the major criticisms Johnson has of both Prior and Gray in Lives of the English Poets is their triviality. If Prior is praised for "correctness and in dustry," he is also blamed for lacking in originality.

"He never made any effort of invention: his greater pieces are only tissues of common thoughts; and his smaller, which consist of light images or single conceits, are not always h is own.Finding the same fault with Gray, he suggests:

"The language is too luxuriant, and the thoughts have nothing new .... The morality is natural, but too 6 8 s t a l e . ..." on the other hand, Johnson finds Shakespeare

c . n Johnson, Lives, II, 207.

68Johnson, "Life of Gray," Rasselas, p. 441. and Milton praiseworthy because of their great insights

into universal truth, in his "Preface to Shakespeare"

Johnson notes: "Nothing can please many and please long,

but just representations of general nature." He calls

Shakespeare "the poet of nature /who7 . . . holds up to 69 his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life."

Shakespeare, according to Johnson, portrays characters who

not only act under ordinary circumstances but in situations

which push them beyond the limits of human control. In

this manner, Johnson contends, Shakespeare provides true

insight into the human situation. Milton's paradise Lost

is also praised for casting new light on the nature of

the human beings. Milton, says Johnson, by skillful use 70 of imagery found new ways to convey known truths. Like

Shakespeare, Milton is applauded for the loftiness of his

undertaking: "Great events can be hastened or retarded only by persons of elevated dignity. Before the greatness

displayed in Milton's poem, all other greatness shrinks 71 away."

In The Function of Criticism Winters takes the same

position. Praising Herbert's "church Monuments," Ben

Jonson's "To Heaven," j. V. Cunninghams' "The Phoenix,"

69Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare," Rasselas, p. 241. 7 0 Johnson, Lives, I, 182.

71Ibid., 172. 47

and Wallace Stevens' "The Course of a Particular," he

insists: "These poems are all on great subjects; the

writing of all is as nearly perfect as writing will ever

be. They are profound and civilized in all their details;

one can turn to them endlessly; they remain in the mind;

they alter the mind; they become a part of one's life" (p.

62). One of the ways one can distinguish between greater

or lesser poems is by the difficulty of the human problem

which the poem attempts to assess. Thus he states: "if

a poem, in so far as it is good, represents the compre

hension on a moral plane of a given experience, it is only

fair to add that some experiences offer very slight diffi

culties and some very great, and that the poem w ill be

most valuable, which, granted it achieves formal perfec

tion, represents the most difficult victory" (IDOR, p. 25).

Winters feels that the subject matter of such great tragic

poets as Shakespeare and Racine demonstrates a real victory

over the human situation while lesser poets touch only on

the superficialities of the human experience (IDOR, p. 25).

At the other extreme, Winters discusses the possibility

that the poet can transcend the subject matter of his poem.

A poem concerning a sto n e, no m atter how e x c e lle n t , he

avers, w ill be minor unless the poet is merely using the

stone to symbolize some value greater than itself. Winters

regards the poet's value in direct proportion to his

i 48

"ability to apprehend certain kinds of objective truths"

(FOC, p. 161).

Because Johnson and Winters take the position that

great poetry reveals and explains the nature of experience,

they share an antipathy for the ornamental style. Johnson

condemns Milton's "Lycidas" because "it is not to be con

sidered as the effusion of real passion? for passion runs

not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. passion

plucks no b e r r ie s from the m yrtle and iv y , nor c a l l s upon

Arethuse and Mincias, nor tells of 'rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel' .... in this poem, there is no nature, 72 for th ere i s no tru th . . . ."

Winters too finds fault with "Lycidas" and for much the same rea so n s, in Forms o f D iscovery W inters

includes a rather lengthy comparison of the ornate style and plain style in sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry. Expressing a marked preference for the plain style, he attacks "Lycidas" as an example of the worst

faults of the ornate. "The poem . . . depends upon loose association . . . partly in the progression of the poem, partly in the pseudo-descriptive details, the numerous flowers, fauns, satyrs, and so on which are named but not seen or understood .... 'Lycidas' gets what unity it has from Milton's magnificent gift for sound and for

^Johnson, Lives, I, 163. rhetorical tone" (p. 124).

Johnson indicates his preference for the plain

style in his biography of Addison. Praising Addison's

prose highly as exemplifying the middle style, he

describes it as neither too formal on serious subjects

nor too "groveling" on light occasions, but instead

"pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent

elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without

glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never de

viates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no

ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations."

He sums up Addison's style with the highest possible

praise; "Whoever wishes to attain an English style,

familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, 73 must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."

W in ters' Forms o f D iscovery opens with the p re

viously mentioned discussion of the two traditions of

sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry: the ornate or

Petrarchan style and the plain style. Winters explains:

"In the plain style at its plainest, the passion with which

the human significance of the definitions is felt is com

municated by the emotional content of the language in which they are stated: that is, we do not have definition

here and emotion there, but meaning and emotion coexist

73Johnson, Lives, II, 149-50. 50

at every moment; in the relatively ornate style, the

excursions are controlled in a general but clear way

by the definitions" (p. 61). Winters' preference for

the plain style is further exemplified in his discussion

o f Ben Jonson:

Jonson is no such enraptured rhetorician as Sidney, but on the other hand, his understanding of Sidneyan rhetoric prevents his indulging in any such affectation of roughness as we find to some extent in Gascoigne? he is freer from mannerism and a purer stylist than either, and, since he operates from a central position, he is more s e n s it iv e and more s k i l l f u l than e ith e r , for he can employ the tones of both without committing himself wholly to one direction. Shakespeare, in comparison, succumbed to excessive and uncontrolled sensitivity; Donne shows the vices of both Gascoigne and Sidney, the affecta tion of harshness on the one hand and sophisti cated ingenuity on the other. Greville alone j of the group rivals Jonson in control of his \ style; yet Jonson's style is more varied than Greville's and places him as the first master stylist of the plain tradition; that is to say, of the greatest tradition of the Renaissance. (FOD, p. 63)

Samuel Johnson and Winters appreciate the plain

style for its simplicity, its lack of affectation, its

ability to come to terms with experience, and consequently,

its moral thrust. Because of the emphasis on truth and

values that both critics demand of poetry, neither of them either accepts totally or rejects completely the work of individual poets. Thus one finds them isolating passages or lines for discussion, praising and blaming not because of who the poet is (whether a particular favorite or otherwise) but because of the moral integrity of the words themselves. Discussing the poetry of Thomas

Gray, Johnson objects to individual words and passages primarily because they either fail to convey moral truth “ or because they are shopworn re-&tatements of old truisrMs.

For instance, of Gray's "ode on the Death of a Favorite

Cat" he objects to the words "the azure flowers that blow" on the grounds th a t they "show r e s o lu te ly a rhyme i s some times made when it cannot easily be found." Johnson con tends that Gray's use of the word "nymph" to describe the cat violates "both language and sense." He avers that while Gray's sixth stanza contains a melancholy truth

"the last ends in a pointed sentence of no relation to the purpose; if what glistened had been gold, the cat would not have gone into the water; and, if she had, 74 would not less have been drowned." Commenting on Gray's

"The Progress of Poetry" Johnson finds neither meaning nor logic in stanza one. He writes: "Gray seems in his rapture to confound the images of 'spreading sound' and

'running water.' A 'stream of Musick' may be allowed; but where does Musick, however 'smooth and strong,' after having visited the 'verdant vales,’ 'rowl down the steep amain,' so as that 'rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar'? if this be said of Musick, it is nonsense; if

74 Johnson, "Life of Gray," Rasselas, pp. 441-42. 52 75 it be said of Water, it is nothing to the purpose."

Winters, like Johnson, is fond of isolating individual passages, lines, and words in what sometimes becomes a vain search for meaning. Again to use Gray as an example, Winters comments on the epitaph portion of

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." An example of bad writing, Winters declares: "The language is stereo typed, but there are other defects. To what extent was Gray unknown to "Fortune and Fame"? He was certainly not comparable in these respects to the local rustics, and the implied comparison is dishonest .... In the last stanza, the parenthetical line intervenes between

'abode' and 'bosom,' which are in apposition; it is im possible to read this stanza aloud, even to a reader familiar with it, in such a way as to make it intelligible or other than ridiculous"(FOD, p. 157). In his discussion of Blake's "The Tiger" Winters contends: "We have, in brief, a great deal of tiger, with no explanation of why he is there." The poem communicates no meaning, says

Winters, because of the failure of its major symbol. He adds, . . we cannot adjust our feelings to a poem which preaches obvious nonsense; but what are we to do if the poem's meaning cannot be determined? And whatever the meaning, we do not have an adequate account of it in the

^Ibid., pp. 442-43. poem" (POD/ pp. 162-63). It appears that what we find in both Winters and Johnson is a constant insistence that the poem's words, passages, ideas have moral integrity and conceptual clarity and that at the center of great poetry there exists an internal consistency to which the poet is inevitably true. Both critics can point to many such passages which they admire.

It might be wise to stop here and point out that

Winters and Johnson do not always concur in their esti mations of particular poems. While Winters heartily agrees with Johnson's assessment of John Donne, writing:

"... one w ill not find it hard to understand how Donne came to commit the sins to which Samuel Johnson objected"

(FOD, p. 74), Johnson's admiration of Gray's elegy is in direct contrast to Winters' assessment. Johnson comments

"The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning 'Yet even these bones' are to me original: I have never seen the emotions in any other place; yet he that reads them here 76 persuades himself that he has always felt them."

Winters' admiration of Ben Jonson's poem "To

Heaven" is immense. Contending that the poem treats of a great subject, he sees it as unmarked by flaws, adding:

^Johnson, "Life of Gray," Rasselas, p. 446. 54

"The poem has no faults that I can discover# and faults

are always easier to discuss than virtues. The surface

is tight and smooth; there is almost no opening" (FOD,

p. 6 8 ).

In their assessment of individual lines# passages,

or poems# both c r i t i c s make p la in what q u a l i t i e s o f poetry

they admire or dislike. In reading the body of their

works# it is evident that the highest praise goes to the

poet who in simple# unaffected style reveals to the

reader basic moral truth. Yet, if one reads only

scattered selections by either man, it is possible to

say that both critics are inclined to summary judgments#

a criticism which has been occasionally leveled at both

Johnson and Winters. John Fraser argues that although

one could never be sure how either might react to a

specific question# if he put the answer in the frame work of their total works# one would find an internal

con sisten cy T h is subject# in regard to Winters# will be more fully treated in Chapter III.

A number o f oth er s im i l a r i t i e s e x i s t between the

two critics. Both have been highly praised for their writing style# a style characterized by logic# balance# and wit. Both are practicing poets as well as critics# which probably helps to account for their concern with

^Fraser# 404. the truth and logic of individual words. Although

Winters calls himself a "reluctant theist," both Johnson and Winters give evidence through their moral vision of a religious temperament. Both, in addition, have been the objects of vitriolic attacks because of their willingness to express their opinions in strong terms.

Paul F u s s e ll c i t e s an abusive comment made by Horace

Walpole on Johnson because of the critic's appraisal of Gray: "Prejudice and bigotry and pride and presumption and arrogance and pedantry are the hags that brew his 78 ink." Likewise Winters has been the subject of abuseP

One of numerous possible examples comes from Stanley

Edgar Hyman's The Armed vision in which he accuses

Winters of ridiculous evaluations "as a flat obiter dictum" using no substantiating evidence and in semanti- 79 cally meaningless terms. The ironic thing about the critics here cited is that their accusations of arro gance and sarcasm are couched in arrogant and sarcastic term s.

Johnson and Winters share a final quality? they resist classification. Much has been made of their similarities here. Basically, they are different. John

^Fussell, p. 249. 79 S tanley Edgar Hyman, The Armed V ision (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948), p. 54. Fraser sees them as alike in both courage and gravity.

Yet, they differ in emphasis. Johnson is inclined to

spend as much time on biography as he does on literary

analysis. Winters' literary analysis involves a much

closer reading of the works than does johnsorfs (see

Chapter III). But more important, their views of

moralism differ. Johnson's view tends to be more

proscriptive; Winters' tends to be more evaluative. in

Rasselas, for example, Johnson explores the various possibilities in his search for the best possible life.

Although he finally rejects all of them, the work is an obvious attem pt to poin t out and m oralize upon the failings of all the choices. Winters, on the other hand, sees poetry as a means of understanding experience, and when he points out the failures and successes of individual poets, it is with the criticism, not of their choices, but of their ability to come to terms with the particular experience of which they write.

Thus it can be said that Winters' identification with the literary moralists places him of rather than jln the tradition. What finally separates him from all of them is his unique definition of moralism. WINTERS AND AQUINAS

Once a critic designates himself as a literary moralist, the important question to consider is by what system of values does he judge the literary work. The answer to this question, in the case of Yvor Winters, should not be too difficult for the careful reader, one need not be a student of philosophy to note Winters' frequent references to and admiration for Thomas Aquinas.

In the index of _ln Defense of Reason there are thirteen page references on Aquinas. This alone, however, hardly proves Winters' admiration for the philosopher since there i s alm ost double th a t number o f refere n c e s to

Emerson, whose philosophical position Winters considers insupportable. The final test then is in reading winters' comments on Aquinas which reveal his deep admiration for the philosopher. In The Function of Criticism he finds:

"The writings of Aquinas have latent in them the most profound and intense experiences of our race "(p. 62).

Praising Aquinas for his moral-philosophical system in

In Defense of Reason, he states:

Aquinas endeavored as far as possible to estab lish a separation between philosophy and theology; philosophy was guided by natural reason, theology was derived from Revelation. But he believed that philosophical knowledge was possible, and in his

57 58

pursuit of it, he composed the most complete and lucid critique of previous philosophy that had been made, and the most thorough and defensible moral and philosophical system, in all likelihood, that the world has known. (p. 374)

It is important to note that in matters of theology, although Winters respects Aquinas' theological position, he does not support it. The teachings and writings of Aquinas, however, have been of as great an interest to philosophers as they have to theologians.

Winters, in Ir^ Defense of Reason, clarifying his own theological position, states: "I myself am not a

Christian and I fear that I lack permanently the capacity to become one . . ." (p. 408). He does, however, admit to being of religious temperament, declaring: "Finally,

I am aware that my absolutism implies a theistic position, unfortunate as this admission may be .... my critical and moral notions are derived from the observation of literature and of life, and . . . my theism is derived from my critical and moral notions" (p. 14). Winters, feels that one need not maintain a certain theological position in order to support a particular moral position.

In ln_ Defense of Reason he says: "... the fundamental concepts of morality are common to intelligent men regard less of theological orientation, except insofar as morality may be simply denied or ignored ..." (p. 2 7 ). Thus he points out: "... Aquinas' examination of the nature of man appears to me acute and extremely usable, and his 59

disposition of theological difficulties perhaps the best

disposition possible" (p. 408). Finally, it appears ob

vious that if Winters were not basically of religious tem

perament, he might have chosen, as did Irving Babbitt, to base his moral philosophy on Aristotelian Scholasticism

rath er than on Thomism which adds th eology to r a tio n a l

philosophy.

While W inters' Thomism, then, is not n e c e s s a r ily

theological in nature, winters views morality from a

theistic position. He defines morality in In Defense of

Reason as that which "guides us toward the greatest happi

ness which the accidents of life permit: that is, toward

the fullest realization of our nature in the Aristotelian or Thomistic sense" (p. 370). Aquinas, according to Alan

Donagan, measured good and evil in regard to the fu lfill

ment of one's true nature. Thus, Donagan comments, Aquinas'

"statement that 'good is that which all things seek' must be

understood as meaning that good is that which all things by

nature seek; and, since man is a rational animal, applied

to roan it means that human good is that which a ll men seek by virtue of their nature as rational animals. Evildoers choose to do and to promote what is opposed to what they

seek by virtue of their rational nature; they affront their own reason."-*- The good we seek by fulfilling our own

^Alan Donagan, "The S c h o la stic Theory o f Moral Law in the Modern World," in Aquinas; A Collection of Critical E ssa y s, ed. Anthony Kenny (Garden C ity , New York: Double day and Co., 1969), p. 327. 60 natures is intimately associated with human reason.

Etienne Gilson in his important discussion of Thomism,

The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, adds:

"The basis of morality is human nature itself. Moral good is every object, every operation enabling man to achieve the virtualities of his nature and to actualize himself according to the norm of his essence which is 2 that of a being endowed with reason."

Winters applies this view to literature. Poetry, he believes, should help one to realize fully his nature by offering "a means of enriching one's awareness of human experience and of so rendering greater the possi bility of intelligence in the course of future action; and it should offer likewise a means of inducing certain more or less constant habits of feeling, which should render greater the possibility of one's acting, in a future situation, in accordance with the findings of one's improved intelligence. It should, in other words, in crease the intelligence and strengthen the moral temper"

(IDOR, p. 20). In effect, what Winters is saying is that poetry, by making one more aware of the human experience, leads him to understand and fu lfill his true nature,

Aquinas' definition of moral good. Furthermore, Winters' insistence on the word "habit" in relation to self-realiza tion is Thomistic. Gilson states Aquinas' position.

2 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of st. Thomas Aquinas, tr a n s. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1956), p. 280. 61

I f we know the nature o f h a b its , we know the nature of virtues because virtues are habits which dispose us in a lasting way to perform good a c tio n s .... Since a habit draws an individual either toward or away from his end and brings him into greater or less conformity to a given standard, we must distinguish between habits which dispose him to perform acts consistent with his nature and those which dispose him to perform acts not con sistent with his nature. The former are good habits and therefore also virtues; the latter are bad habits and also vices.^

Aquinas feels that evil, rather than being an active force, is a deprivation of good. The human being is good only if his potential is fully realized. In his

Summa Theoloqica, he avers: ". . . the fullness of human being requires a composite of soul and body, having all the powers and instruments of knowledge and movement.

Therefore, if any man is lacking in any of these, he is lacking in something due to the fullness of his being.

So that as much as he has of being, so much has he of goodness, while so far as he is lacking in the fullness of his being, so far is he lacking in goodness, and is 4 said to be evil." Evil then is a negative condition resulting from the absence of good whereby one denies his true nature and refuses to be led by his reason; good is equated with self-realization, a state commensurate

^Ibid., p. 259. 4 Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, in Great Books o f the Western WorId, 19, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Ency. Brittanica, 1955), 694. only with the rule of reason.

Winters uses Aquinas' view of evil as deprivation in his chapter on Hart Crane in In Defense of Reason. If the critic in examining a literary work fails to take note of this absence, he changes its negative value to a posi tive (in the sense of active) and potentially dangerous force. Discussing a professor he designates as Professor

X, Winters comments: "He conforms to established usages because he finds lifepleasanter and easier for those who do so; and he is able to approve of Emerson because he has never for a moment realized that literature could be more than a charming amenity ..." (p. 610). The danger in not recognizing this absence has been stated in

Chapter I, but it merits restatement here. "Poetry is a medium," says Winters, "by which one mind may to a greater or lesser extent take possession of another • .

. . if we enter the mind of a Crane, a Whitman, or an

Emerson with our emotional faculties activated and our reason in abeyance, these writers may possess us as surely as demons were once supposed to possess the unwary

. . ." (IDOR, p. 600). Evil, then, because it is nega tive in nature, can be disguised. To Winters, Emerson's confidence in man's instinct as opposed to his reason would constitute a deprivation of the rational faculty and thus an e v i l . 63

This emphasis on the fundamental importance of reason is a position shared by Aquinas and Winters.

Gilson explains Aquinas' definition of reason as "the movement o f thought from one o b je c t o f knowledge to another in order to attain intelligible truth ....

Reason proceeds from in itial terms apprehended purely and simply by our intellect . . . the intellect and the reason depend upon one single power. Therefore, in man, the names i n t e l l e c t and reason r e fe r to one and the same 5 power." Thus Aquinas would have objected to Emerson's intuitive knowledge for the same reason that Winters does, its denial of reason. Gilson comments: "But in

Thomism th ere is a most e n e r g e tic a ffirm in g o f the physical nature of the soul and vigilant care to close all paths which might lead to a doctrine of direct intuition of the intelligible in order to leave open no 6 other road than that of sense knowledge." This highest of human faculties, according to Aquinas, places man just below the angels who know truth divinely without the aid of reason.

To Winters, without reason or rational meaning to support the emotive feeling, a poem or any literary work suffers. Basically, the negation of reason with the re sulting overabundance of uncontrolled emotionalism is

^Gilson, p. 211.

6Ibid., p. 362. 64

Winters' chief objection to romanticism. Although

Aquinas preceded the romantic era by half a millenium,

his philosophical position would have led him to the

same conclusion. To Aquinas, one of the cardinal virtues

is temperance, which involves the restraint of excessive

passion through reason. Gilson explains: "Passions,

however, remain in man, and in him alone is the sensi

tive appetite; as endowed with reason, he dominates this

appetite and these passions by free judgment."^ He goes

on to add: "Morally speaking, passions are neutral. If

they get out of reason's control, they become real mala-

Q dies." Thus, Aquinas, viewing romanticism as excessive

passion unchecked by reason, would find it, as does

Winters, philosophically unacceptable.

While Winters' view of the romantics w ill be more

fully explored in Chapter III, it might be pointed out

here that he considers the movement as the epitome of over-emotionalism and anti-rationalism. He writes: "A

common romantic practice is to use words denoting emotions, but to use them loosely and violently, as if the very care

lessness expressed emotion" (IDOR, p. 368). Careless use of language negates reason, says Winters. "The rational

content cannot be eliminated from words; consequently,

^Ibid., p. 273.

8Ibid., p. 286. the rational content cannot be eliminated from poetry.

It is there. If it is unsatisfactory in itself, a part of the poem is unsatisfactory; the poem is thus damaged beyond argument" (IDOR, p. 364). He accuses the French

Symbolists as well as the American Experimentalists of

"trying to extinguish the rational content of language while retaining the content of association" (IDOR, pp.

369-70). Words, according to Winters, have meaning.

Thus he places himself squarely on the side of Aquinas as an anti-nominalist.

In l£ Defense of Reason Winters asks the question;

"How can we determine whether there is in the poem a satisfactory relationship between feeling and rational meaning? The answer, he declares, is an act of moral judgment. The question then arises whether moral judg ments can be made, whether the concept of morality is or is not an illusion. Winters takes up the problem of nominalism on several occasions, in his chapter on

Henry Adams, subtitled "The Creation of Confusion,"

Winters discusses the attack of Ockham, whom he calls

"the most profound of the medieval nominalists" on Aquinas

(p. 374). To Ockham moral knowledge comes from the Divine

Will. Winters explains: "This type of Christianity, the fideistic, or voluntaristic, derives all knowledge from faith and Revelation, and refuses to take the natural reason seriously .... Aquinas was a sane enough man 66

to wish to make the most of all his faculties, and a good

enough Christian to believe that God had given him his

f a c u lt ie s to use" (p. 3 7 7 ). W inters sees Henry Adams'

theory of history as ockhamist and finds it, as a

r e s u lt , d e f ic ie n t . "He /Adam^7 b elon ged ," says W inters,

"to a moral tradition which had taken its morality wholly

on faith for so long that it had lost the particular kind

of intelligence and perception necessary to read the

universe for what it is . . ." (IDOR, p. 391).

The nominalist denies reality to universals. To

him the only reality is in individual things. Winters

credits Aquinas, as an anti-nominalist, with the unity

and survival of the church in the thirteenth century.

He explains: "... the Church rests solidly on a

recognition, whether explicit or implicit, of the reality

of ideas"(IDOR, pp. 408-09). it was Aquinas who slowed

the spread of nominalism.

To Winters, nominalism results in confusion. In h is d isc u ssio n on John Crowe Ransom, whom W inters d e sc r ib e s as a nominalist "at least in intention," he recognizes the

empirical fact that no one can truly know either the

particular or the general although one recognizes the existence of both. Winters advocates that one handle

such problems as Aquinas would "to accept the solution which provides the best beginning for an understanding of the rest of our experience; to judge the proposition in terms of the relationship between its consequences and the whole of what we know" (IDOR/ p. 511). Winters sees the difficulty of Ransom's position as nominalist in his dislike for abstractions coupled with his inability to do away with them. "He has an abhorrence of the rational processes which is less related to that of Ockham than to that of the romantics; it is a traditional feeling—I refer to romantic tradition—which makes him abhor words such as "moral," "ideal," or "rational" without troubling really to understand what they mean. As a result, he tries always to theorize about poetry as if he had actually got rid of the general as a vicious delusion, and sometimes he actually does so theorize. But he has not got rid of it, and it makes him a great deal of trouble" (pp. 512-13).

Because the nominalist denies the existence of universals, an existence which is at the very heart of moral absolutism, nominalism as a philosophical position is abhorrent to Winters. Winters objects to Ockham's surrender of reason to faith, but he is just as opposed to a theory of scientific determinism. Like Aquinas he supports the concept of free w ill.

in the Summa Theologica Aquinas takes an explicit stand on the freedom of the w ill. He writes? 68

But some have maintained that heavenly bodies have an influence on the human w ill in the same way as some exterior agent moves the will as to the exercise of its act. But this is impossible. For "the w ill," as stated in the book on the Soul, "is in the reason." Now the reason is a power of the soul, not bound to a bodily organ. And so it follows that the will is a power absolutely in corporeal and immaterial. But it is evident that no body can act on what is incorporeal, but rather the reverse; because th in g s in co rp o rea l and im material have a power more formal and more uni versal than any corporeal things whatever. There fore it is impossible for a heavenly body to act directly on the intellect or the w ill.9

In interpreting Aquinas' philosophy Gilson points out:

"The w ill /to Aquinas7 is not only free from restraint

by definition, but also by necessity. To deny this

truth, is to remove from human acts anything to give

them a blameworthy or m erito rio u s ch aracter .... Any

doctrine which ultimately removes the notion of merit,

removes also that of morality. . . . Thus free w i l l

is a necessary feature of moralism.

Winters sees determinism as one of two value con

cepts opposed to absolutism, the other being relativism.

In In_ Defense of Reason he defines determinism as "that

theory of the universe which holds that the whole is a

single organism, pursuing a single and undeviating

course which has been predestined by God or determined by its own nature, it sees the human being simply as a

^Aquinas, 661.

^Gilson, pp. 244-45. 69

part of this organism, with no independent force of his own” (p. 9). obviously, then, to accept determinism is

to negate freedom of the w ill. The two most vigorous proponents of determinism, as Winters sees it, are the

Calvinists and the Marxists. He takes up the problem of

Calvinism in his discussion of Henry Adams.

According to Winters the basic conflict in

Calvinism is between the ideas of divine predestination and individual moral responsibility, two ideas which cannot co-exist in a single belief, but do. The only solution to the paradox as Winters sees it is in the admission made by wiser Calvinist writers that the ideas, while logically incompatible, co-exist as part of a divine mystery. Winters does not find this wisdom in Adams.

Thus when Adams in The Education o f Henry Adams views the world as chaotic, he is bound to take both a Cal- vinistic and a deterministic approach. Winters comments:

"Like a true Calvinist and a true determinist, he turned at once, for his answer, to the Nature of the universe, and sought to show that the whole universe, as a single mechanism, was running down"(p. 406). Henry Adams is all too prone, according to Winters, to view the nature of the times as the particular determinant of human actions, thus relieving man of moral responsibility because of his incapacity to act existentially. Winters 70

uses Aquinas to refute Adams' position. He states:

. .1 respectfully submit that had Aquinas felt him

self determined by the stupidity and confusion of his

time, he would probably have accomplished very little.

He endeavored to learn as much as possible from the

best minds of his time and of the two thousand years,

more or less, preceding; and having learned that, he

set out to do the best he could with it" (p. 411).

Adams, Winters points out, in contrast "arrived at his

view of the twentieth century by reversing the process.

He thus deduced that the world was deteriorating, and so

found a j u s t i f i c a t i o n for h is own s ta te o f mind" (p. 4 1 1 ).

Adams' tendency to account for human behavior by

a deterministic view of the times is shared, Winters

contends, by T. S. Eliot. He points out that although

Eliot in his own criticism is quite severe on determinists,

he takes a deterministic position in After Strange Gods by his statement: "At the moment when one writes, one

is what one is, and the damage of a lifetime, and of having been born into an unsettled society, cannot be

repaired at the moment of composition. "*-1, Carrying

Eliot's argument to its logical conclusion, Winters points out: "The point of view here indicated is . . .

related to the Marxist and Fascist view that the individual

^T. S. Eliot, After Strange Gods (New York: Har- court, Brace and Co., 1933), p. 27. 71

lacks the private and personal power to achieve goodness

in a corrupt society . . ."(IDOR/ p. 487). If a writer

seeks to conform to the deterministic spirit of his age,

Winters declares, he writes not from strength but from

weakness. Such an idea is totally opposed to free will,

and thus, to morality.

The determinist philosophy leads ultimately to

passivism. With the acceptance of things as they are,

with the resultant negation of moral choice, one can only

accept passively the workings of his own destiny. Both

Aquinas and Winters, because they are moral activists,

find this position indefensible. Gilson, in explaining

Aquinas' position writes: "it is not enough that man

should think; he must live and live rightly. Now to

live rightly is to act rightly. To act rightly, we must

take into account not only what we ought to do, but how 12 we ought to do it." He further states: "of all the

conditions required for a human act to be morally good,

the first and most important is that it be subordinate

to its legitimate end .... A perfectly good moral act

is still one which fully satisfies the demands of reason both in its end and in each of its parts; and not content

to will good, realizes it."^-3

■L2Gilson, p. 263.

13Ibid., p. 260. 72

Winters applies this activism to poetry in The

C ritiq u e o f Humanism. He w r ite s: "Poetry, as a moral

discipline . . . should not be regarded as one more

doctrine of escape. That is, moral responsibility should

not be transferred from action to paper, in the face of any

particular situation. Poetry . . . should offer a means

of enriching one's awareness of human experience and of

so rendering greater the possibility of intelligence 14 in the face of human situations involving action." in

In Defense of Reason he writes: "Morality is supposed to

guide human action. And if art is moral, there should be a relationship between art and human action" (p. 371).

Characteristic of human actions which, of

course, must be guided by reason are the principles of balance and control. In other words, neither Aquinas nor

Winters advocates a life of reason or a poetry of reason devoid of feeling or emotion. What both insist upon

instead is that the passion be balanced sufficiently with reason so that the ultimate effect is control, in his Summa Theologica Aquinas says: "When a passion fore stalls the judgment of reason so as to prevail on the mind to give its consent, it hinders counsel and the judgment

14 Yvor Winters, "Poetry, Morality, and Criticism," in The Critique of Humanism, ed. Hartley C. Grattan (New York: Brewer and Warren, Inc., 1930), p. 317. of reason. But when it follows that judgment, as though commanded by reason, it helps toward the execution of rea so n 's command."!-* What Aquinas asks i s not the d i s placement of passion by reason but a balance between the two. Gilson, in explaining Aquinas' position, writes.*

"In a man's case, to act well is to act according to reason. Now one of the reason's most important functions is to introduce moderation and balance into all things.

It is temperance which introduces this balance into all human a cts .... The object of temperance is not the elim in a tio n o f th ese /s e n s u a l7 p le a su r e s. Taken by them selves, sensible and corporeal goods are not irrecon cilable with reason. They are instruments in its service and it must use them to attain its proper ends."

Translating the quality of control into his theory of poetry, Winters asks not that the poet elimi nate feeling but that the emotion motivated by the poetic experience be proportionate rather than excessive, in

The Function of Criticism Winters takes the idea of con trol and in discussing it places his view of art firmly alongside the philosophy of Aquinas. He writes:

According to my own view, the poem is a rational statement about a human experience made in such a way that the emotion which ought to be motivated by

15 Aquinas, 20, 47.

^Gilson, p. 295. 74

that rational understanding of the experience is communicated simultaneously with the rational understanding: the poem is thus a complete judgment of the experience, a judgment both rational and emotional. The poetic medium is simply a means to a finer and more comprehen sive act of understanding than we can accom plish without it. The poem thus falls under the heading of prudence, to continue with scholastic terms .... (p. 139)

Winters states, however, that he does not share Aquinas'

view of aesthetics. Aquinas, according to Winters, equates

natural beauty with artistic beauty. Winters objects,

explaining: "A beautiful natural object . . . is not an

act of human judgment; it is outside of the moral order.

And although a man's apprehension of such an object, and

evaluation of it, is an act of judgment and within the

moral order, this apprehension and evaluation can occur

only in an act of criticism or in a descriptive work of

art" (p. 140).

Winters, then, although he does not adopt Aquinas'

aesthetics, sees his own moral-philosophic position as

Thomistic. Reason becomes all important because it leads

to self-realization and thus to natural goodness. Evil,

as deprivation of good, denies both true nature and the

rule of reason, a rule which brings balance and control

to human emotions and thus orders human experience, in a world of human choice where man may exercise his free will, it is reason which leads the poet to understand and 75 justly evaluate experience, an evaluation which ultimate ly lends a moral tone to literature. WINTERS AND LYRIC POETRY

The cornerstone has been laid. That is, Winters' moralism has been defined and its philosophical basis established. Now it is time to add the superstructure, the application of Winters' moral principles to his practical criticism. Since the purpose of this disserta tion is not to explore Winters' development as a critic but rather to explain his application of moralism to criticism, the works under discussion w ill be confined to those he wrote as a mature critic: In Defense of Reason, The

Function o f C r itic is m , and Forms o f D isco v ery , to g eth er with several pamphlets and books on individual poets.

The starting point of such an exploration must necessarily concern itself with two questions: (1) What does Winters consider to be the function of criticism?

(2) How does Winters, as critic, apply moral principles in his careful exploration of the form, ideas, technique, and metrics of lyric poetry?

Logically and analytically, Winters sets forth in

In Defense of Reason a description of the critical process culminating in what he considers to be the chief function of criticism: the act of moral evaluation. in order for the critic to justly arrive at such an evaluation, Winters

76 77 sets up four preliminary steps. Because a work of art is not created in a vacuum, Winters believes the critic needs to begin with a statement "of such historical or biographical knowledge as may be necessary in order to understand the mind and method of the writer" (IDOR, p.

372). second, since the artist’s own theory of art (if he has one) is intrinsic to an understanding of his work

(as in the cases of writers such as Poe, Whitman, Eliot),

Winters would include "such analysis of his /the writer ls7 literary theories as we may need to understand and evaluate what he is doing"(IDOR, p. 372). The two steps which follow call for a "rational critique" of both the paraphrasable content or motive of the poem and the feeling motivated, in which discussion Winters would have the critic consider the style, as seen in language and technique, of the poet. Winters has been criticized for his insistence that a poem have para phrasable content. What his critics have all but ignored is his oft-repeated admonition that the paraphrasable content, because it excludes the feeling inherent in the work, is never equal to the work, obviously in setting up the critical steps, he has taken full cognizance of the importance of feeling.

A careful examination of the foregoing principles,

Winters declares, should lead the critic to that roost important function — the final act of judgment, which he characterizes as "a unique act, the general nature of which can be indicated, but which cannot be communicated precisely, since it consists in receiving from the poet his own final and unique judgment of his matter and in judging that judgment" (IDOR, p. 372). Wintersis not, however, dogmatic about the application of this process.

He writes: "in the actual writing of criticism, a given task may not require all of these processes, or may not require that all be given equal emphasis; or it may be that in connection with a certain writer . . . one or two of these processes must be given so much emphasis that others must be neglected for lack of space ..." (IDOR, p. 373). Furthermore, Winters is fully aware that any dissection of a poem is basically an artificial process since the poem is a unit, but, he maintains, such an analysis is valuable if one recognizes the nature of the p r o c e s s .

Winters' description of the critical process, then, with its emphasis on value judgments, is clearly consistent with his moralism. in The Function of Criticism, after describing the primary function of criticism as evaluation, he goes on to say: ". . . unless criticism succeeds in providing a usable system of evaluation it is worth very little" (17). Thus the moral evaluation of the poem becomes the final act of judgment as to its greatness. 79

In reading the criticism of Winters one cannot

help being impressed by his careful attention to matters

which might at first seem extraneous to moral criticism .

His critical concerns, unlike those of the two humanists

Babbitt and More, go beyond the ideas in the poem under

discussion to encompass its style and poetic technique.

(The fact that this attention is rare in moralist

criticism has already been discussed in Chapter I). To

Winters, however, these matters are far from extra-moral.

While the paraphrasable content of a poem indicates the

rational meaning, Winters insists, as we have already

seen, on a just balance between motive or tenor (the

rational content) and feeling or vehicle (the emotive

content). The feeling generated by the poet's use of

form, technique, and language, if extracted from the

poem, leaves less than an empty shell. For, winters

insists, the poem's "total intention" cannot be revealed

in the logical content alone (IDOR, p. 19). Thus,

matters of feeling, engendered by style and technique,

cannot be extraneous to the moralist. Winters writes:

"The rational content of a poem is not a core to which

irrelevancies are attached in a kind of nimbus; it is

something which exists from moment to moment, in every word of the poem, just as does the feeling; and the value of the poem resides precisely in the relationship between 80

these two elements, and not in qualities supposedly

attaching to one of the partners in the relationship"

(IDOR, p. 533).

in The Critique of Humanism Winters explains how

form functions morally. Writers who sacrifice form in

order to capture experience, he contends, defeat their

own ends for in so doing their poetry becomes closer to

prose tending "to lose the capacity for fluid and highly

complex relationships between words ..." (p. 308). in

contrast, he asserts: ". . . the greatest fluidity of

statement is possible where the greatest clarity of form

prevails" (p. 308). What Winters is insisting upon here

is the control which form provides the poet. The poet who works within form is better able to give order to

experience, in writing of the third of Donne's Holy

Sonnets he uses the line "Have the remembrance of past

joys for relief" to illustrate the importance of form.

"This kind of roughness," he contends, "is sometimes sup

posed to be defensible on the grounds that it is expres

sive of passion; but passion is expressed in the arts

through the mastery of form, not through the violation of form" (FOD, p. 75). Thus, Winters argues, feeling or emotion without the discipline of form results in dis

integration. Form provides the means to arrest this dis

integration . 81

Just as the critic cannot extract formfrom

meaning without damaging the poem, neither can he ignore

poetic techniques. Winters believes the moralist critic

must come to terms with rhythm and meter because of their

emotional impact on the poem. In In Defense of Reason,

he explains:

Meter has certain phonetic values of its own, and it clarifies, identifies, and even modifies the phonetic values of unmetered language. And the total phonetic valueof metrical language has the power to qualify the expression of feeling through language. Since the expression of feeling is a part of the moral judgment as I have defined it, the meter has moral signifi cance, for it renders possible a refinement in the adjustment of feeling to motive which would not otherwise be possible. (IDOR, p. 551)

Meter, in addition to qualifying the expressing of feel

ing, says Winters, actually adds intensity (FOC, p. 40)*

Finally, because meter can both qualify and intensify

feeling and because the value of any word in metrical

language differs from its value in prose, Winters sees

meter as providing the poet with endless opportunity for

creating language and thus making value judgments. He

says: "He /the poet7 is not endeavoring to invent a

logical argument, then meter it, then confuse argument and meter in the interests of excitement. He is seeking

to state a true moral judgment; he is endeavoring to bring

each word as close to a true judgment as possible" (IDOR, p. 550). For a critic to consider the ideas of the poet as 82

isolated from his technique is the height of absurdity

to Winters, who maintains; "The rational and emotional

contents of the poem . . . exist simultaneously, from

moment to moment, in the poem; they are not distinct, but are separable only by analysis . . . the rhythm of the

poem permeates the entire poem as pervasively as blood

permeates the human body ..." (FOC, p. 8 3 ).

Just as the moralist critic concerns himself with

matters of form and technique, so must he also be sensi

tive to language. Winters constantly stresses the two aspects of language; denotative and connotative. Winters contends that precision in the use of both aspects makes each word the poet uses doubly effective. Thus he dis

likes associationist poets who use words to support meanings and who ignore the denotative quality of lan guage. Discussing associationist poetry, he writes;

"Since only one aspect of language, the connotative, is b ein g u t i l i z e d , le s s can be sa id in a given number o f words than if the denotative aspect were being fully utilized at the same time . . . When the denotative power of language is impaired, the connotative becomes pro portionately parasitic upon denotation in previous contexts; for words cannot have associations without meaning ..." (IDOR, p. 61). Since, as Winters constant ly affirms; "Poetry . . . is a statement in words about a human experience," the precision of the words themselves 83 affects the quality of moral evaluation. Of Winters,

John Fraser writes: "... certainly one can see in his work, criticism and poetry alike . . . the sense of

language as publicly inspectable things with publicly accrued meanings and conventions whose claims cannot be

i dodged merely by willing it."

Thus it becomes obvious that Winters' careful attention to matters of form, style, technique, and the use of language in a poem is completely consistent with his position as moralist critic. Winters sums up his reasons in The Critique of Humanism. Poetry, he be

lieves, should force the poet to "the discovery of values" as he solves such problematical situations as the "location of a rime" or "the perfection of a cadence without disturbance to the remainder of the poem"(p.

301) .

Before moral evaluation can take place, Winters says the critic must analyze the motive of the poem and the feeling motivated. In his discussion of motive

Winters takes up the philosophical ideas which con tribute to the overall position of the poet. Some of the poets to be discussed w ill be seen, in Winters' estimation, to be morally flawed by the philosophical position they have taken; some have been strengthened. in order to

i John Fraser, "Yvor Winters: The perils of Mind," Centennial Review, 14, No. 4 (Fall, 1970), 403. 84 understand Winters' criticism of poets and poetry, one must take into account his attitude toward certain ideas, some o f which he admired and some o f which he did n ot.

Romant icism

The philosophical positions to which Winters objects all have one thing in common: they are non- rational or irrational, in some respect all are tinged with romanticism. Winters discusses both the romantic theory of literature and the romantic theory of human nature in l£ Defense of Reason and finds them equally dangerous. "Romanticism has dominated western civ ili zation for two and a half centuries," he says, adding:

"Its influence is obviously disastrous in literature and is already dangerous in other departments of life"

(p. 9). Its greatest danger, Winters asserts, is in its complete denigration of reason. Romanticism, says

Winters, assumes that man, being naturally good, requires no outer moral restraint, that he may trust his basic impulses which are superior to reason. The effects of this theory on philosophy and literature are pervasive.

To the romantics the good life is achieved through a t o t a l r e lia n c e on im pulse. This id ea, says W inters, when combined with pantheism, produces belief in man's mystical union with God or Emersonian unitarianism. Thus, unchecked 86

suggested. Thus, if reason is negated, literature becomes an emotional expression. Man, being godlike, uses poetry as a form of expressing his divine self.

Since romanticism is based on relativism, no theory of moral evaluation can be applied to poetry. Neither is the poet obligated to provide any kind of reasonable balance between motive and feeling. The natural result of romantic theories applied to literature, says Winters, is the dissolution of language and meaning and excessive emotionalism. As an example of such excessive emotional ism W inters o f f e r s Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a

Cloud" and S h e lle y 's "Ode to the West Wind." "One cannot believe," he writes, "that Wordsworth's passions were charmed away by a look at daffodils, or that Shelley's were aroused by the sight of the leaves blown about in the autumn wind. A motive is offered, and the poet wants us to accept it, but we recognize it as inadequate" (IDOR, p. 3 6 9 ).

Emotion or feeling unbalanced by sufficient motive is typically romantic. Winters opposes any philosophical system which seeks to substitute emotionalism for reason and self-expression for self-awareness. Romanticism elevates experience beyond evaluation and thus becomes

Winters' primary target. 87

Deism

A precursor of romanticism, deism, as outlined by the third Earl of Shaftesbury, represents still another unsatisfactory philosophical position to Winters, winters outlines the basic tenets of this philosophy in j^n Defense o f Reason:

1. The universe is directed by a beneficent in

telligence .

2. Everything in the universe, being divinely

ordered, is as it should rightfully be.

3. While some things may appear evil, this is

only because of man's limited understanding

of the divine order.

4. The natural result of this divine beneficence

is that man will find happiness in doing good

and misery in its counterpart.

4. Man is naturally virtuous, and thus following

his proper instincts and emotions (which can

be improved by training), he will be led

inevitably to goodness. (p. 449)

Winters' objections to deism as a philosophy are basically identical to his objections to romanticism. He writes:

". . . in spite of all contradictions the philosophy represents an attack on the rational faculty and a fairly complete outline of later Romanticism: . . .

the attack is made by means of what purport to be the

methods of the rational faculty—that is, the attack

is composed of a small set of concepts which are

supposed to explain all experience, and which are moved

about in various pseudo-rational relationships in order

that certain philosophical conclusions may be reached"

(IDOR, pp. 449-50). Thus deism, like romanticism, sup

ports intuition, impulse, and belief in natural goodness

unchecked by strict adherence to a super-imposed moral

law. No restraints, no controls are necessary to natural

rational man. That deism purports to be a rationalist

philosophy is merely semantic quibbling. Winters points out: "The deists appear to have achieved the delusion

that they were reasoning with a final and immutable

clarity, at the same time that they were attacking with all their small but apparently sufficient intellectual powers the very foundation of reason itself" (IDOR, p.

450) .

Winters finds deism opposed to Christian doctrine and classical philosophy both of which stress self- examination based on "sound and intricate" rules so that roan might improve, and in the case of Christianity, be saved. Deism, by contrast, allows man to use his "reason" to be convinced that he need not subject himself to 89 self-examination since salvation comes from doing what he believes to be right. Thus, Winters argues, "The

Age of Reason" is a misnomer for the eighteenth century since "The reasoning of the Age of Reason was very largely directed toward the destruction of the authority of Reason" (IDOR, p. 451). The Shaftesburean optimistic view of the universe and of human nature naturally led to Emerson's philosophic position as stated in Spiritual

Laws (and summarized by W inters in Forms o f D iscovery)

"that no man, no matter how ignorant of books, need be perplexed in his speculations" (p. 147). Thus, Winters asserts, man's painstaking efforts at self-examination, the work of two milleniums, was discarded in favor of simplistic, irresponsible formulations. There was to be no delving into the human soul, no attempt at moral under standing of experience, instead, Winters points out, there was substituted a philosophical smugness, a feeling that all essential problems basic to man,had been solved, which inevitably led to a fixed set of stereotyped expressions and formulas ("Whatever is, is right") tending toward sentimentalism and oversimplification. Shaftes burean deism together with Lockean associationism, says

Winters, had a deleterious effect on poetry of the eighteenth cen tu ry.

The new doctrines eliminated precise under standing and generated the eighteenth century 90

cliche', and later the nineteenth century c lic h e ' .... Poetry became revery over remembered sensory impressions, sometimes abandoning even grammatical order .... In the course of the eighteenth century . . . imagination and the poetic faculty became gradually to be identified . . . and imagina tion and revery became indistinguishable. The nature and function of language dis appeared from critical theory, and the quality of the language employed in poetry deterio rated. (FOD, p. 149)

W inters su g g e sts a number o f examples of th is d e te r io r a

tion. For purposes of illustration two will suffice:

"Grongar Hill" by John Dyer and "Ode to Evening" by

W illiam C o llin s . in "Grongar H ill," says W inters, Dyer presents unvisualized rural details in stereotyped

language meant to evoke an automatic response from the reader. Sentiment replaces intellect. Winters finds the poem little more than a poor imitation of Milton.

Winters sees Collins, on the other hand, as more careful in his use of visual detail but so irresponsible in his associative procedure that line follows line guided by neither logic nor order. Deism and the non-rational atmosphere which it engendered are unhealthy, says Winters.

He cites for evidence the high incidence of madness among eighteenth-century poets (Collins, Gray, Chatterton,

Smart, Blake) and suggests; "A psychological theory which justifies the freeing of the emotions and which holds rational understanding in contempt appears to be sufficient to break the minds of a good many men with 91

sufficient talent to take the theory seriously" (FOD,

p. 158). Thus W inters fin d s the seem ingly r a tio n a l

deistic explanation of the universe, like romanticism,

both deceptive and irrational, for within its philosophi

cal system lay the roots of madness.

Determinism

Much has already been said about Winters' view

of determinism. (See Chapter II.) Therefore, this sec

tion will be necessarily brief. Winters defines deter

minism in in Defense of Reason as "that theory of the

universe which holds that the whole is a single organism,

pursuing a single and undeviating course which has been predestined by God or determined by its own nature, it

sees the human being simply as a part of this organism, with no independent force of his own" (p. 9). Further more, Winters finds a definite relationship between deter minism and romanticism. Both are anti-intellectual philosophies. "Romanticism," says Winters, "teaches the infinite desirability of automatism, and determinism teaches the inevitability of automatism. Determinism is romanticism in a disillusioned mood" (p. 9). obviously because determinism is non-rationalistic, it is, to

Winters, morally flawed. Man needs neither reason nor moral law in a determinist universe. Reason can only be 92 superfluous to a puppet, and if one can neither direct nor control experience, there is little use in attempting to understand it. Winters sees a writer influenced by determinism as a mere victim of his age. The cultural, social, religious environment determines both his subject matter and his treatment of it. Writers who have a pre disposition toward determinism, according to Winters, often take one of three philosophical positions: hedo nism, Calvinism, or Marxism. Of Marxism, Winters says little. He finds both critics and writers in this vein highly unsatisfactory not only because he objects to their determinism but also because of their tendency to use literature for purposes of propaganda. Winters clearly states his attitude toward the Marxist brand of deter minism in pi Defense of Reason. He declares Eliot a determinist although, he adds, Eliot himself was never aware of this. He cites for evidence Eliot's statement found in After Strange Gods that the writer is under the dual influence of his time and situation at the time of composition and cannot transcend either. To this Winters adds: "The point of view here indicated is, furthermore, related to the Marxist and fascist view that the in dividual lacks the private and personal power to achieve goodness in a corrupt society ..." (IDOR, p. 4 3 7 ). To the moralist, this places man at the level of animal, 93

incapable of self-improvement through self-knowledge.

Of the other two determinist positions, hedonism and

Calvinism, Winters has much to say.

Hedonism

Like romanticism and determinism, hedonism is an anti-intellectual philosophy. Winters explains how one

species of determinist falls naturally into hedonism.

"Since they cannot control in any measure the courses of their lives, the determinists sometimes find solace in seeking pleasu re along the way ..." (IDOR, p. 10). On the other hand, Winters sees a strong connection between hedonism and romanticism. Declaring Wallace Stevens "the most perfect laboratory of hedonism to be found in litera ture," Winters adds: "Stevens is released from all the restraints of Christianity, and is encouraged by all the modern orthodoxy o f Romanticism; h is hedonism i s so fused with Romanticism as to be merely an elegant variation on that somewhat inelegant System of Thoughtlessness" (IDOR, p. 459). Winters discusses the ultimate effect of hedo nism on literary theory in his chapter on John Crowe

Ransom in Xn Defense of Reason. He writes: . .

Ransom regards, or tries to regard, the work of art as an imitation made for love of the original object ..."

(IDOR, p. 515). Winters' response is that we may be interested in evaluating an idea or experience (i.e. jealousy in Othello) without liking the idea per se.

Ransom's "cultivation of sensibility for its own sake," says Winters, "has produced some extremely insensitive remarks." Winters uses as an example Ransom's comment 2 in The World’s Body on comparing a poem by Stevens with one of Tate's. Ransom wrote: "The deaths of little boys are more exciting than sea surfaces." Winters calls this

"a remark . . . worthy of a performed and elderly cannibal"

(IDOR, p. 518). The point is, hedonism, an anti-rational approach to poetry, cultivates the senses far beyond the limits of reason and the boundaries of morality.

Calvinism

Calvinism, on the other hand, stresses morality.

As a result, Winters does not find it as dangerous a philosophy as he does hedonism. He states an objection to it, however, in l£ Defense of Reason. Discussing the

New England Calvinists, he writes: "The morality of these men may have been in fact merely habitual, but in theory it was predestined and arbitrary, as I have said. It did not derive, theoretically, from an understanding of human nature and a desire to improve human nature by careful and

^John Crowe Ransom, The W orld1s Body (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1938), p. 61. enlightened modification, /see the philosophical prin ciples of Thomism, Chapter Il7 It derives from the arbitrary w ill of God. " (p. 379) New England Calvinism with its emphasis on predestination, like the other determinist philosophies to which Winters objects, re moves from man moral responsibility. Since the decision over whether a man goes to heaven or hell has been deter mined before his birth, he has little to do but act out his own destiny. Calvinism, however, is far less objectionable than hedonism because of its paradoxical heavy emphasis on moral values and behavior, for al though man's destiny is out of his hands, he is expected to behave morally as proof that he has been elected to heaven rather than condemned to hell. Winters finds the effects of Calvinism on literature extremely interesting.

Since Puritan morality was "strong, simple, and arbitrary" the literature thus produced led away from realism and toward allegory. He explains: "The puritan theology rested primarily upon the doctrine of predestination and the inefficaciousness of good works; it separated men sharply and certainly into two groups, the saved and the damned, and, technically, at least, was not concerned with any subtler shadings. This in itself represents a long step toward the allegorization of experience, for a very broad abstraction is substituted for the patient study of the minutiae of behavior long encouraged by catholic

tradition" (IDOR, p. 153). This allegorical vision,

Winters believes, strongly influenced the literary minds of New England poets such as Emerson, Dickinson, Bryant,

Holmes, and even Very. Winters' principal objection to

Calvinism, however, is not only to its refusal to recog nize the implications of predestination on moral responsibility but also, and more important, to the

Unitarianism and Emersonian romanticism which were its natural result.

Unitarianism

The Calvinist doctrine of predestination, says

Winters, with its negation of salvation through good works, led inevitably to religious apathy and the re sulting decay of the church. By the earlv nineteenth century, Calvinism was giving way to unitarianism in which the tendency was to see Christ as a moral teacher,

God as benevolent, and man as having freedom of the w ill and ease of salvation. Early Unitarianism placed respons bility for one's behavior directly on the individual.

Winters admires the intellectual results of early unita rianism, using adjectives such as "able," "dignified, 11 and occasionally "distinguished," to describe the poetry of Bryant and the prose of Prescott, but finds a tendency 97

toward the stereotyped style and easy generalization of

the English deists. Although Unitarianism started out on a moral note, Winters finds that by diminishing, if

not eliminating, supernatural sanction, it tended to

reduce the intensity of moral conviction. Thus, he avers, it yielded rapidly, especially among the intel

lectual classes, to Emersonian transcendentalism with its

romantic ethical theory. Emerson's effect on Unitarianism

is described by Winters in l£ Defense of Reason. "Emer

son eliminated the need of moral conviction /a conviction which had already waned through Unitarianism7 and of moral

understanding alike, by promulgating the allied doctrines of equivalence and of inevitable virtue. in an Emersonian u n iverse th ere is eq u a lly no need and no p o s s i b i l it y o f judgment; it is a universe of amiable but of perfectly unconscious imbeciles" (IDOR, p. 164).

What one garners from an analysis of the philosoph ical doctrines of which Winters disapproves either mildly or strongly is that all, without exception, are tainted by romanticism. Both English deism and its American coun terpart, Unitarianism, by insisting man lives under the beneficent rule of a rational superintelligence with whom he is in complete accord, by celebrating man's intuitive nature, by preaching his perfectibility, and by thus either reducing or eliminating his need for profound 98

self-examination, acted as the fertilizers which prepared

the soil for the full-scale romanticism which was to

follow. Both, purporting to be rationalist philosophies,

really denigrated reason with their emphasis on intuition

and promoted man to divinity, thus laying the groundwork

for romanticism.

Determinism and Calvinism, the two other philo

sophical positions discussed here, in spite of having

taken the opposite position are seen by Winters as

objectionable. Like deism and Unitarianism, they are

non-rational. The only difference is they do not purport

to be. Unlike deism and Unitarianism their universe is

neither benevolent nor intuitive. Thus deism and Unita

rianism are morally flawed by qualities of optimistic ro

manticism; Calvinism and determinism, by qualities of pessimistic romanticism.

C la ssic ism

Opposed to romanticism is the classicism which

Winters admires and which is characterized by Donald E.

Stanford in his Southern Review article, "Classicism 3 and the Modern Poet." "Dignity, reason, and order - these are the impeccable ideals of classicism. We expect

3Donald E. Stanford, " C lassicism and the Modern Poet," Southern Review, New Series, No. 2, 5, (Spring, 1969), 475-500. 99

from the classicist, together with a sense of history,

of tradition, a 'serene and severe control of the

emotions by Reason,' a respect for the literature and

institutions of the past, a desire for harmony and 4 order in the arts, a recognition of the dignity of man."

Later in the article Stanford characterizes the literary effect of classicism. "All of these poets /Robert Bridges,

E. A. Robinson, Yvor Winters, and J. V. Cunningham/1" prefer poetry which is logically organized, with controlled

feeling, and with substantial and meaningful paraphrasable content, making use of denotative as well as connotative

5 aspects of language." Classicism then epitomizes the qualities Winters sees not only as a standard, an ideal to which poetry should aspire, but by the same token as the ideal to which human beings should aspire. Since

Winters sees poetry as the evaluation of human experience, it is easy to understand why he advocates a return to such classical standards as dignity, reason, and order, p a r tic u la r ly when we see the disharmony, a lie n a tio n , and lack of restraint to which romanticism has led us.

Having examined the philosophical positions to which Winters frequently refers in his books and their literary implications, we are led inevitably to a

^Ibid., p. 476.

^Ibid., p. 486. 100

discussion of the forms and techniques of the lyric

poetry produced by these beliefs. For the purposes of

this paper I shall divide my discussion of poetry tech

niques into three parts though admittedly there w ill be

certain overlappings. The first section will deal with

the aspects of form encompassed in structural techniques,

the second with style involved in the use of language,

the third with feeling, with special attention to Winters'

primary principle of the significance of balance and con

trol. Primarily the discussions and comparisons which

follow w ill illustrate how Winters sees lyric poetry

as following either classical or romantic traditions and beliefs. What will emerge from the discussion is a

picture of how moralism functions in the more or less

technical aspects of poetry and why Winters prefers

traditional to experimental poetry.

Form

When Winters speaks of the form of the poem, he means broadly the poem as a work of art existing in time.

His discussion of form includes what he refers to as the rational structure, "the orderly arrangement and progres s io n s o f thought," and the movement or rhythm w ith in the poem itself (IDOR, p. 12). it is the form of the poem which gives order to experience. Thus he writes, "... 101 all feeling, if one gives oneself . . . up to it, is a way of disintegration; poetic form is by definition a means to arrest the disintegration and order the feeling; and in so far as any poetry tends toward the formless, it fails to be expressive of anything" (IDOR, p . 144) .

In The Function of Criticism Winters includes a brief history of form. It is his belief that poetry of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries repre sents the apex of structural perfection principally because such poems had lo g ic as t h e ir organ izin g p rin ciple. However, as Shaftesburian deism and Lockean associationism gained control toward the end of the seventeenth century, they brought with them the decay of form, a decay which progressed through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Such poets as Bridges and Hardy toward the close of the nineteenth century, by returning to a more or less classical position, introduced the possibility of the recovery of form. The poets of the twentieth century, therefore, had a choice of two possible directions in which they could go — toward the abandonment of form or toward the recovery of form. Examples of poets who chose the former are Pound and Eliot; the latter, Robin son, Stevens (in his best poems), Tate, Louise Bogan,

Cunningham, Kunitz, and Bowers. 102

Winters gives a detailed analysis of structural form in his discussion of "The Experimental School in

American Poetry, " a section of Ijn Defense of Reason which illuminates the virtues he finds in traditional poetry with its emphasis on form and the defects he perceives in experimental modes with their relative lack of concern for forms. in order to clarify, it becomes necessary to summarize Winters' discussion of the seven structural form s.

The first of these is what Winters calls "The

Method of Repetition" (IDOR, pp. 30-35), which he defines as "a restatement in successive stanzas of a single theme, the terms, or images, being altered in each restatement" (p. 31). Two poems which utilize this method and which Winters admires are Nashe's "Adieu!

Farewell earth's bliss" and Raleigh's "The Lie." These poems are generally paraphrasable, and logical, says

Winters, although, because of the method, there is no necessity for a controlling principle of order or sequence. T ranslated in to more modern p o etry , however, the results of the repetitive method have been less than admirable, having led to the rambling style of Whitman, a form Winters characterizes as both "lax and diffuse"

(IDOR, p. 31). The inevitable result is the disintegra tion of form, a principal example of which can be found 103 in the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. in The Women at

Point Sur, a poem of some one hundred and seventy-five pages, Winters sees the diffusiveness to which the method can lead. Describing the poem as a "perfect laboratory of Mr. Jeffers' philosophy /that man, while the product of God or Nature, is cut off from them by his humanity and yet driven to act as he does by the very nature of his humanit^7 and a perfect example of his narrative method," the repetitive form, Winters explains:

Barclay, an insane divine, preaches Mr. Jeffers' religion, and his disciples, acting upon it, become emotional mechanisms, lewd and twitching conglomera tions of plexuses, their humanity annulled. Human experience in these circumstances, having necessarily and according to the doctrine, no meaning, there can be no necessary sequence of events: every act is equivalent to every other; every act is devoid of consequence and occurs in a p e r fe ct vacuum; most of the incidents could be shuffled about into different sequences without violating anything save Mr. Jeffers' sense of their relative intensity. (IDOR, p. 33)

The fallacy, then, inherent in the method of repetition is the lo s s o f some kind o f lo g ic , some p ro g ressiv e method of ordering experience which would lead to a way of under standing it. The use of this technique by an experimen talist can lead to romantic intensity and away from classical understanding.

The second structural form, according to Winters, is "The Logical Method"(IDOR, pp. 35-36), which is de fined as the "rational progression from one detail to 104

another" (p. 35). Obviously, Winters admires this form

with its emphasis on rationality, which he describes as

prevalent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in

Europe. This method, however, when exploited, can lead

to an empty intellectualism as it did occasionally in

metaphysical poetry of the seventeenth century and as it

does frequently in experimentalist poetry of the twen

tieth century. In the category of the Logical Method,

Winters would also include poetry which is implicitly

rational such as William Carlos Williams' "On the Road

to the Contagious H ospital," a poem Winters characterizes

as "directed meditation" (IDOR, p. 36). As a proponent of

reason, logic, and evaluation, Winters would, of necessity,

prefer this method. Its principal technique of organiza

tion being rational, a poem using this structure must

logically arrive at a conclusion which can be evaluated as to the quality of its precision and understanding.

Type three is d escrib ed a s "N arrative," a method which recounts events in sequence, seeing them as part of a cause-effect relationship (IDOR, pp. 36-40) . Although

Winters deals primarily with prose in this section, he does make mention of the short narrative poem, praising the skill of Edward Arlington Robinson in "Luke Havergal" and

"Eros Turannos." Basic to a good narrative form, says

Winters, is that the writer deal with a character from a 105 position outside of the mind of that character since it is esthetic distance which finally allows for analysis and evaluation. Thus one of his objections to the stream-of-consciousness narrative is that it lacks the distance required for evaluation. The value of narra tive form, when properly carried out, then, is in its dual requirements of logic and rationality.

The fourth type of form is "pseudo-Reference"

(IDOR, pp. 40-57), which, Winters explains, maintains the feeling of rational coherence by retaining the vocabulary associated with it. This feeling is achieved by such methods as grammatical coherence which disguises the absence of rational coherence, values transferred from one field of experience to another field to which they do not apply, references either to a "non-existent plot," or a "non-existent symbolic value," or a "purely private symbolic value," and "explicit reference to a non-existent or obscure principle of motivation." All of these forms or structures have one thing in common - th ey are cen tered around or based upon some fa u lty premise which is assumed by the poet to exist or to be generally recognized and agreed upon. Of pseudo-referent poetry Winters says: "This kind of writing is not a 'new kind of poetry,' as it has been called perennially since

Verlaine discovered it in Rimbaud. it is the old kind of 107

itself is impaired. Winters sees the natural result of such weakening to be what he calls the fallacy of imita tive form. That is, as words lose their literal meanings, writers tend to use them to imitate rather than to evaluate experience. An example of such impairment, says Winters, is in the work of James Joyce. "Mr. Joyce endeavors to express disintegration by breaking down his form, by experiencing disintegration before our very eyes, but this destroys much of his power of expression. Of course he controls the extent to which he impairs his form, but this merely means that he is willing to sacrifice just so much power of expression— in an effort to express som ething— and no more. He is lik e Whitman tr y in g to express a loose America by writing loose poetry" (IDOR, pp. 61-62). To the classicist, Winters says, the sensi b ility of such expressivists as Joyce and Whitman may be admirable, but the formlessness cannot be justified.

To Type S ix, "The A ltern a tio n o f Method" (IDOR, pp. 64-65) Winters devotes little space, noting only the possibility of a poet shifting from one method to another and citing Mallarme's "L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune" as an exam ple.

The last of the structural modes, "The Double Mood"

(IDOR, pp. 65-74), however, is dealt with at some length, principally because it involves "one of the two most significant vices of style," Laforguian irony. (The

other is the "unbalance between the reasonable and non-

reasonable" found both in Pseudo-Reference and Qualitative

Progression - IDOR, p. 61). in the double mood the poet

builds up two types of feeling, one of them being ironic,

and thus having the tendency to cancel the other, which

is usually romantic. Three poets who use this mode are

Byron, Pound, and Wallace Stevens. The double mood is,

however, not limited to romanticism and irony. It can

also be a blend of heroic intention and satire such as

in Dryden's "MacFlecknoe," but there is an important

difference: in Dryden's poem there is no mutual can

cellation. As Winters states: "The poet is perfectly

secure in his own feelings" (IDOR, p. 70). He knows

what he is attacking and has merely chosen a point of

view from which to proceed. The romantic ironist, how

ever, is insecure. He first establishes, then ridicules

the feeling. Winters sees no control here and accuses

such a poet of "moral insecurity" (p. 70). Winters

succintly states both his moralist position on romantic

irony and the solution to the problem. Citing a con

versation with a young lady, he comments; "Miss Rowena

Lockett once remarked to me that Laforgue resembles a person who speaks with undue harshness and then apolo gizes; whereas he should have made the necessary 109 subtractions before speaking. The objection implies an attitude more sceptical and cautious than that of Mr.

Burke; instead of irony as the remedy for the unsatis factory feeling, it recommends the wastebasket and a new beginning" (IDOR, pp. 72-73). Winters finds the attitude of the romantic ironist "a corruption of feeling" resulting in the inevitable disintegration of style, for such "irony is an admission of careless feeling, which is to say, careless writing, and the stylist is weak in proportion to the grounds for his irony" (p. 73).

To examine the structural forms here discussed is to see that Winters' demand for reason, for proper balance between feeling and motive, for some under standing to result from the literary experience is translated into a preference for traditional forms which cling to dignity, reason, and order and a dislike for the experimentalism which he associates with the desire to create experience rather than to understand it. Winters best illustrates the point in a comparison between E liot’s

The Waste Land and Baudelaire 's Les Fleurs du Mai. De claring the subject matter similar in the two works, he w r i t e s :

. . . if one will compare, let us say, "Le jeu" with "A Game of Chess," one may perhaps note what Eliot overlooked. Eliot, in dealing with debased and stupid material, felt himself obliged to seek his form in his matter: the result is confusion 110

and journalistic reproduction of detail. Baudelaire in dealing with similar matter, sought to evaluate it in terms of eternal verity: he sought his form and his point of view in tradition, and from that point of view and in that form he judged his material, and the result is a profound evaluation of evil. The difference is the difference between triviality and greatness. (IDOR, p. 499)

S ty le

In considering style as Winters sees it, there are basically three aspects which must be taken into account. The first to be discussed is what Winters calls poetic convention which he asserts encompasses more than style but which carries with it such a strong emphasis on poetic language that it merits inclusion here. A consideration of language values w ill follow in which the discussion w ill center principally on words as cores of meaning. The forms words take in rhythm and rhyme, that is the functional use of words in poetry will be the third and final aspect of style discussed. What should emerge from the discussion which follows is some fairly clear cut lines between traditional or classical and experimental or romantic use of language.

Winters defines poetic convention as "the initial, or basic, assumption of feeling in any poem, from which all departures acquire their significance." He adds:

"The convention of a poem is present, or at least dis- cernable as the norm of feeling, throughout the entire poem, so that in a sense all the language of a poem is I l l

conventional . . (IDOR, p. 81). Convention, according

to Winters, can best be understood by comparing traditional

and experimental poetry. He defines traditional poetry

as "poetry which endeavors to utilize the greatest

possible amount of the knowledge and wisdom, both tech

nical and moral, but technical only in so far as it does

not obstruct the moral, to be found in precedent poetry.

It assumes the ideal existence of a normal quality of

feeling, a normal convention, to which the convention of

any particular poem should more or less conform" (IDOR,

p. 82). This form and convention allows every word in

the poem i t s maximum potency.

Traditional poetry, Winters points out, because

it is neither stereotyped nor mannered, tends to belong

to no particular school. Experimental poetry, on the other hand, though it comes in various guises, becomes

super-involved in technique and tends to establish and support abnormal conventions. Language may be stripped of its denotative meaning, the poet insisting that connotative meaning carry the entire burden. Or, the poet may, by experimenting with rhetoric, achieve, as Milton did, a heightened intensity. That Milton was successful in mastering an "emphatic and violent rhetoric" in Paradise

Lost Winters fully admits but compared to Shakespeare, a traditionalist, Winters finds Milton achieved neither 112 wideness of range nor accuracy of perception. The perils of Miltonic rhetoric avoided by Milton, Winters insists, can best be illustrated by his imitators.

Both traditional and experimental poetry, says

Winters, can be badly imitated. Some poets who write what may seem to be traditional poetry strip language of its meaning in still another way. These are the "pseudo traditionalists" who, regarding tradition as exotic, make mannerism out of convention. Winters explains: "He /the literary poet7 imitates the idioms of the traditional poet, but they are no longer for him familiar and exact; they are foreign and decorative; they degenerate into mannerism. He comes to regard certain words, phrases, or rhythms, as intrinsically poetic, rather than as instruments of perception or as the clues to generative ideas"(IDOR, p. 34). The poetry thus produced strips language of its moral intelligence. Some poets placed in this group are Symons, Swinburne, Wilde, and Dowson, whose poetry, Winters avers, is all but meaningless.

The understanding of poetic convention, then, is basic to the poet's use of language. Winters goes on to say: "if the convention is badly defined the poetry is vague," a fault which he finds in typical romantic poetry.

An even more violent disintegration of poetic convention can be seen in pseudo-experimental poetry in which the 113

p o et, in the manner o f E. E. Cummings, com p letely aban

dons convention and distorts language.

In summary, W inters does not deny that e x p e r i

mental poetry can be successful (i. e. Milton) but he

does not believe it capable of the moral perception of

traditional poetry. Pseudo-traditional and pseudo-

experimental poetry, however, are far more pervasive

influences because by removing rational meaning from

language, they destroy completely its moral force.

Because Winters stresses the importance of con vention as a norm of feeling, he places great emphasis on words as cores of meaning which can either degenerate

thought into slipshod sentiment or elevate it into precise and dignified moral understanding. Winters finds in language man's potential to discover reality.

Language having both denotative and connotative values, the denigration of either has the power to impair dis covery. Yet, this is precisely what modern experimen talist poets have attempted. Winters' opinion of such denigration is succinctly stated:

There is a feeling abroad at the present time that the complexity of poetic language hampers the poet; that he can free himself only by throwing away the language of civilization and writing "naturally." There is a question, how ever: "naturally for whom?" This dislike for the language of civilization might fairly be termed chimpism or chimpolatry. The language of the chimp (he has one, of course), is natural 114

to the chimp, and he likes it, but over the millenia he has accomplished very little with it. (FOD, pp. xviii-xix)

The purpose of poetry, says Winters, is the

rational and emotional understanding of the human con

dition, which can give us at least the possibility of

controlling our own destinies or at least free us from

being nothing more than cogs in a machine, determined by

history and maneuvered by circumstance. Language, or

more exactly, words, which are meant to suggest rather

than mean, impair the understanding. The results of such

impairment can be studied in Joyce's Finnegan 1s Wake, in

which the dream convention causes words to be "broken

down and recombined in mysterious ways" (IDOR, p. 61).

Winters finds this a vice of style, declaring: ". . .

when the denotative power of language is impaired, the

connotative becomes proportionately parasitic upon

denotation in previous contexts for words cannot have

associations without meanings; and if the denotative

power of language could be wholly eliminated, the conno

tative would be eliminated at the same stroke, for it is

the nature of associations that they are associated with

something" (IDOR, p. 61).

In other words, unlike the experimentalist, the great poet, a traditionalist by definition, affirms the value of both aspects of language and by granting the LL6 intrinsic part of the poem, according to Winters, who says of the poet: "He is not endeavoring to invent a logical argument, then meter it, then confuse argument and meter in the interest of excitement. He is seeking to state a true moral judgment; he is endeavoring to bring each word as close to true judgment as possible; and he has it in his power to modify the values of words within certain limits" (IDOR, p. 550). The value of meter to a poem,says Winters, is in its power "to qualify the expression of feeling through language" (p. 551).

Because feeling is basic to moral judgment the meter too has moral significance. Thus Winters states his preference for the traditional meters of Shakespeare and Jonson, who "achieve a maximum of effect with a minimum of variation" (p. 551).

Winters' emphasis on dignity, order, and control carries over into his preference for the plain style rather than the decorative or ornate style. Since this subject has already been touched upon in Chapter One

(see comparison of Winters and Samuel Johnson) it w ill be treated here briefly.

The principal quality which separates the two styles is the use of decorative language, which appeals to the emotions, in the ornate style as opposed to precise language, which appeals to the intellect as well in the 117 plain style. in Forms of Discovery Winters explains:

"In the plain style at its plainest, the passion with which the human significance of the definitions is felt is communicated by the emotional content of the language in which they are stated; that is, we do not have definition here and emotion there, but meaning and emotion co-exist at every moment; in the relatively ornate style, the excursions are controlled in a general but clear way by the definitions"(p. 61).

The imagery is prone to be highly emotional in the ornate style compared to the tough intellectualism of the imagery in the plain style. Winters sees the tendency toward decoration in poetry as one of the prin cipal causes of what he considers to be the deterioration of late seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century poetry. Consequently, although he finds much that is worthy of praise in an ornate poem, he still feels there is much lacking. As an example, I cite his comment on Spenser's "Epithalamion, " a poem for which he ex presses some admiration and of which he writes: "... the poem is ornate, but the ornament sometimes has splen dor; the poem lacks weight and intellectual concentration, and it has little of the moral grandeur, the grandeur of intellectual substance and of personal character to be found in Gascoigne and Raleigh'1 (FOD, p. 29). Possibly the easiest way to understand Winters' preference for

the plain style as opposed to the ornate style is to

compare his comments about Ben Jonson, whom he calls

"the first master stylist of the plain tradition" (FOD,

p. 63), with his comments about John Donne, whom he

places in the ornate tradition.

Declaring Jonson's lyrics expository in structure,

Winters adds: "... but unlike many, they engage in

very little figurative excursion (such as one gets in

Donne) ..." (FOD, p. 64). He finds jonson's chief

concerns ethical and his language correlated perfectly

with his subject matter. A poem by Jonson which Winters

greatly admires is "To Heaven," of which he writes:

"The reasons for the success of the poem are hard to

describe, for there is no imagery, no decoration, and

the metrical and stanzaic forms employed are the simplest

in English" (FOD, p. 68).

Winters finds the poetry of John Donne, on the other hand, so highly ornamental that precision is

sacrificed, offering "The Canonization" as an example, he declares: "In Donne's poems the constancy of the

lovers is the tenor; the gold and the compasses are the vehicles; the vehicles are more interesting than the tenor

therefore they are ornaments, and the tenor — the essen

tial theme — suffers" (FOD, p. 73). Donne, by adding 119 decoration for its own sake, weakens the quality of poetic statement. Winters states: "... Jonson could have said more in two lin e s than Donne says in twelve"

(FOD, p. 72). Winters accuses Donne of merely affecting directness and finds his poetry, although capable of profundity, inferior to Jonson's.

If one examines the comments made by Winters on the two poets and their use of language, one discovers anew the internal consistency of Winters oft-repeated position. The plain style of Jonson allows the greatest emphasis to be placed on tenor. The richness is found in the precision of poetic insight. Donne, by concen trating on the vehicle, directs the reader's attention to d ecoration and away from meaning. W inters as mora list sees the value of language in meaning, precise meaning, stripped of irrelevance.

Poetry, by its very nature, uses language to form specific patterns. The poet may choose to bind himself to a rigid pattern such as one finds in the Spenserian sonnet, a more flexible pattern as in blank verse, or he may decide to free himself completely from the demands of pattern by employing free verse, paradoxically,

Winters finds the greatest freedom for the poet in adherence to particular patterns of language, in a section of In Defense of Reason titled simply "The 120

Heroic Couplet and its Recent Rivals" he explains the

reason for this seeming contradiction. The inflexi

bility of the heroic couplet, says Winters, acts as a

constant element within which the poet can create

numerous variations. Because the couplet has a strong

identity of its own, the poet is free to move from

description to satire, from lyricism to didacticism with

comparable ease and without the potential monotony of

long ponderous stanzas. As Winters explains: "The poet

may move in any d ir e c tio n whatever, and h is movement

w ill be almost automatically graduated by the metronomic

under-current of regularity; and if he chooses at certain

times to devote himself to prosaic explanation, the

metronome and the Popian balance, emerging naked, are

capable of giving his prose an incisiveness possible in

no other form" (IDOR, p. 142). The poet who uses the

heroic couplet effectively can allow for variations in

rhythm, the slightest of which becomes immediately

noticeable because of the constancy of the form. There

fore, the most subtle of nuances is possible, enabling

the poet to exploit the fullest possibilities of language.

Poets who have made extensive use of the heroic couplet have been able to create effectively their own

styles within the fixed pattern. Winters cites Dryden,

Pope, Johnson, and Churchill as masters of the form. 121

Dryden, according to Winters, handled the couplet with great d iv e r s it y w h ile Pope concentrated upon a s in g le complexity, of Pope, Winters adds: "... y et he i s successful, to the reader familiar with his sensibility he is one of the most exquisitely finished, as well as one of the most profoundly moving, poets in English"

(IDOR, p. 138). Winters does, however, reserve the greatest praise for Churchill, who, he claims, exploited the heroic couplet to the limits of its variation and power in a single poem, "Dedication to Warburton," of which he writes:

The feeling . . . is deeply involved in the rhythm, especially in the relationship of syntax to versification. The long and involved sen tence, with its numerous parenthetical inter rupting hesitations, and after thoughts, is foreign to the other masters of the couplet. The style is more d iff e r e n t from Dryden, Pope, Gay, or Johnson than they are from each other, and it is probably a more complex style than any one of them ever achieved, though all of them are sufficiently complex .... (IDOR, p. 141)

in comparison to the flexibility of the heroic couplet, Winters finds blank verse and free verse rather ponderous instruments, blank verse allowing for much less variation because of its fixed metrical patterns and free verse (as practiced by many poets) allowing for no osten sible subtlety because of its lack of any pattern at all.

Describing Websterian blank verse as that used by Eliot in "Gerontion," Winters finds it a far weaker instrument, 122 explaining: "In nearly all verse of this kind, the sense of blank verse norm is feeble; the substitution of feet becomes meaningless because there is so much of it; there is no care for the distribution of secondary accents or lesser syllables; and there is no basic regularity which can be made to support didactic or other linking passages when they are necessary ..."

(IDOR, p. 142).

Free verse carries with it problems of its own.

Since no norm exists to which the poet can add the subtlety of variation, the syllables within the .line lack tightness and precision. This is not to say that Winters denigrates either blank verse or free verse but that he finds within these forms problems which are uncommon to the heroic couplet. Praising a poem by Elizabeth

Daryush, the daughter of Robert Bridges, he adds: "Yet like the best free verse, it lacks the final precision and power, the flexibility of suggestion, of the best work in accentual-syllabics, in which every syllable stands in relation to a definite norm" (IDOR, p. 148).

In summary, what we fin d in Winters* d isc u ssio n of language is what we should expect to find — a definite preference for tradition and classicism over experimentalism because the established norm allows for the infinite variations, the subtlety, and as a result, the 123

precision in language, the evaluation of experience,

which the moralist viewpoint demands. Winters explains:

. .a s traditional poetry in general aims to adjust

feeling rightly to motive, it needs the most precise

instrument possible for the rendering of feeling ..."

(p. 150).

Balance and Control

Adjustment of feeling to motive - this is one of

the primary principles by which Winters evaluates poetry.

Only in such an adjustment can one see precision operating.

McKean sees Winters' fundamental notion as that of balance.

Implicit in McKean's analysis is the idea of control. He writes; "in Winters' view . . . the artist's work is

'evaluating and shaping' (i.e. controlling) a given ex p erien ce, 'and try in g in that manner to p e r fe c t a moral attitude toward that range of experience of which 7 he was aware. ' "

When Winters speaks of the importance of balance and control, he is not advocating a poetry devoid of feeling. Such a poetry becomes an empty intellectual exercise. He explains: "It would be possible to write a poem unimpeachable as to rational sequence, yet wholly

7 Keith McKean, The Moral Measure of Literature (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1961), p. 102. inconsecutive in feeling or even devoid of feeling.

Meredith and Browning often display both defects" (IDOR, p. 40). On the other hand, as we have already seen, neither does he favor intense feeling without the proper limits imposed by just motivation, one of the fundamen tal vices he finds in romanticism. Hyperbolic poetry comes under special criticism because by disturbing balance it tends to make the vehicle far more important than the tenor. in some of the poetry of John Donne,

Winters finds a tendency toward the hyperbole of empty intellectualism. Writing of Donne's poetry in Forms of

Discovery, he avers; "... for my own taste the details exhibit a somewhat excessive straining for mere ingen u ity ..." (p. 77). Winters finds the dramatic first lines of "The Canonization" — "For Godsake hold your tongue and let me love" — an example of both affecta tion and cleverness. His opinion of Donne's extravagant use of metaphoric language has been discussed previously, but it is interesting to see Winters apply logic to the elaborate conceits of Donne to illustrate the lack of intellectual substance. Discussing "The Fxtasie," he finds a basic fallacy in the passage in which the two souls are compared to armies (11. 13-44) since they are not really warring forces but in the process of uniting.

Thus Winters finds that because of the influences working 125

on Donne, which he cites as "the Petrarchan fascination

with ingenious figures, the Gascoignian passion for harsh

realism, and the complication of Donne's own character"

(POD, p. 74), his poetry often resorts to an excessive

intellectualism which masquerades as feeling and which

destroys the delicate balance between emotion and reason.

Although romantic poems such as those o f Words worth and Shelley are the complete opposites of Donne's,

that is the hyperbole tends to appeal to the emotion

rather than to the intellect, the basic result is the

same — vehicle becomes more important than tenor. Poems already cited as examples, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "To a Skylark," illustrate what happens when the poet gives way completely to feeling. As Winters comments:

"A motive is offered, and the poet wants us to accept it, but we recognize it as inadequate" (IDOR/ p. 369) . Other examples can be cited in the poetry of Emerson, Whitman, and Hart Crane, who w ill come under closer scrutiny later.

When balance is distorted, control becomes non existent, leading to disorder of style, Balance and control are two of the primary qualities of classicism.

Thus, it follows that Winters admires such poets as Ben

Jonson, J. V, Cunningham, E. A. Robinson, and others who are part of the classical tradition. 126

In summary, W inters' c r i t i c a l p o sitio n i s t o t a l l y consistent with his moralist position. Although he fre quently admires poets who take a philosophical position to which he objects or who violate the principles of form, style, balance and control, which he recommends, he admires them in spite of these flaws rather than because of them.

To some poets he gives very little space in his books; to others, a great deal. It now behooves us to turn to some of the poets about whom Winters has written much in order to see how he applies his moralism to specific poets and poetry.

It would be virtually impossible in a dissertation of this length to consider all the poets and poetry with which Winters has dealt in his major critical works. Con sequently, I have chosen arbitrarily once again to divide my discussion into philosophy and technique. First, some of the poets whose philosophical positions Winters feels have marred their works w ill be discussed and compared to poets whose philosophy (whether shared by Winters or not) has not been damaging. The second part of the discussion w ill be limited to some poets whose work is marred by defects of style as compared to poets whose style has contributed to their greatness. 127

Hart Crane

Although Crane can be considered a modern p o et, he

makes an ideal subject with which to begin because Winters'

attitude toward him is linked so closely with his attitude

toward Emerson, Whitman, and thus romanticism. Winters'

essay on Crane comes at the end of Ih Defense of Reason

and has a curious title: "The Significance of The Bridge by Hart Crane or What Are We to Think of Professor X?"

(pp. 577-603). in the essay Winters uses a history-of-

ideas approach to Crane, showing him to be the literary-

philosophical heir to Emerson through Whitman. Discussing

Emersonian Romanticism as a precursor of Whitman and thus

Crane, Winters points out:

He /Emerson/7 was able to present the anarchic and anti-moral doctrines of European Romanticism in a language which for two hundred years had been capable of arousing the most intense and the most obscure emotions of the American people. He could speak of matter as if it were God; of the flesh as if it were spirit; of emotion as if it were Divine Grace; of impulse as if it were conscience; and of automatism as if it were the mystical experience .... Emerson and his contemporaries, in surrendering to what they took for impulse, were governed by New England habit; they mistook second nature for nature. They were moral parasites upon a Christian doctrine which they were endeavoring to destroy, (IDOR, p. 587)

F ollow ing t h is comment on Emerson, W inters r e s o r ts to the established practice of criticism in citing authority as well as his own knowledge to prove Whitman, who obviously was a strong influence on Crane, was philosophically an Emersonian. To Winters, crane's biography proves what

aberrations in human behavior such philosophical systems

generally promulgate. Having described Crane as a homo

sexual with a penchant for alcoholism and barroom brawls,

Winters adds.* "I should judge that he cultivated these weaknesses on principle . . . and as an avowed Whitmanian, he would have been justified by his principles in culti

vating all his impulses" (p. 589). Winters ascribes

Crane's suicide in 1932 to be the natural result of putting the d o ctrin e s o f Whitman and Emerson in to p r a c tic e . He writes; ". . . in the first place, if the impulses are

indulged systematically and passionately, they can lead only to madness; in the second place, death, according to the doctrine, is not only a release from suffering but is also and inevitably the way to beatitude" (p. 590).

Winters cites a rather alarming bit of correspondence between Crane and himself in which Winters, attempting to console crane on the suicide of his friend Harry

Crosby, received the rather flippant response that one need not be disturbed as Crosby himself regarded his suicide as a great adventure.

To his history of ideas and biographical discussion of Crane, Winters adds a third element — Professor X, who illustrates the insipidness of that teacher or critic who, unmindful of the danger inherent in a given philosophical 130

in Part Iv, "Cape Hatteras," Winters again finds the strong negative influence of Whitman, of which he writes: "The Whitmanian doctrine which Crane emphasizes in this poem is the doctrine of an endless procession of higher and higher states of perfection, or what I have called the doctrine of change for its own sake" (p. 595).

The obvious relativism of Crane's (Whitman's) attitude here sharply contrasts with a single absolute of perfec tion maintained by Winters' moralist position.

One large philosophical curiosity Winters notes is found in "The Tunnel" which deviates from Whitman in that it presents a vision of ugliness one does not find in

Whitman. This Winters attributes to the ugliness in

Crane's own life but faults the poet for failing to under stand this ugliness either in his life or in his poetry.

The final part of the poem, however, is seen as a return to Whitmanian pantheism. Analyzing the effect o f Emerson and Whitman on the poem and on C rane's l i f e ,

Winters adds: "The difficulties inherent in the Whit manian theme come out more clearly in Crane than in

Whitman, or in Emerson because of the religious passion of the man." The end result is that Crane, unlike Emerson and Whitman, is unwilling to accept a muddled confusion of means and ends. Thus, Winters notes; "We have, it would seem, a poet of great genius who ruined his life and his 131

talent by living and writing as the two greatest reli

gious teachers of our nation recommended" (p. 598).

The faults in the technique of The Bridge, says

Winters, are largely by-products of the philosophical

errors. Winters adds: "The work as a whole is a failure

.... The incomprehensibility and the looseness of con

struction are the natural result of the theme, which is

inherited from Whitman and Emerson. The style is at

worst careless and pretentious, at second best skill

fully obscure; and in these respects it is religiously

of its school; and although it is both sound and powerful

at its best, it is seldom at its best" (p. 598). Thus

Winters finds Crane a failure both as a poet and as a

man. The tragedy as Winters sees it is that Crane was a

potentially great poet, who, possessed by the demon of

philosophical relativism, was unable to understand the

price of such possession. Winters adds: "He had not

the critical intelligence to see what was wrong with his

doctrine, but he had the courage of his convictions, the

virtue of integrity, and he deserves our respect. He has

the value of a thoroughgoing demonstration. He embodies

perfectly the concepts which for nearly a century have been generating some of the most cherished principles of our

literature, our education, our politics, and our personal

morals" (pp. 602-603). 132

Winters' essay on Crane is a good example of the

critic at work. Nowhere is the essay inconsistent with

the critical and moral theories espoused by Winters. His

estimate of Crane# based upon the major work of that poet#

is neither cruel nor sarcastic. Crane's poem is a failure#

according to Winters, because it fails to be a just evalua

tion of experience. Crane's basic error is in his judg

ment, the people he chose to believe in, and Winters'

estimation of where this error led him is both demon

strable and fair.

William Butler Yeats

Anyone who carefully analyzes Winters' literary

moralism is not surprised to find his reaction to Yeats

unfavorable. Winters' pamphlet "The Poetry of W. B. Yeats"

explains his objections to the Irish poet and his work.®

Basically, Winters takes issue with Yeats on two points:

first, he finds Yeats's personal philosophical system,

on which his poetry leans heavily, repugnant; second, he

finds Yeats's use of symbols sentimental, non-intellectual,

obscurantist.

Dividing the essay into seven parts# Winters begins with an analysis of Yeats's philosophy. Can one appreciate

®Yvor Winters, "The Poetry of W. B. Yeats," Swallow pamphlets# No. 10 (Denver, Alan Swallow# 1960). 133

the poetry and ignore the philosophy as other critics

have suggested, asks Winters. The answer is a resound

ing no. He explains; "We need to understand the ideas

of Donne and of Shakespeare in order to appreciate their

work, and we have to take their ideas seriously in one

sense or another . . (p. 3). Summarizing the princi

pal ideas of Yeats, Winters links the poet's theories

inextricably with romanticism. "All good comes from the

emotions, and even madness is good. Wisdom is a pejora

tive term; ignorance is the reverse" (p. 5). Analyzing

Yeats'ssocieta1, cosmological, and psychological theories,

Winters finds them equally indefensible. Yeats'sconcept

of the ideal society, says winters, dominated by the

landed gentry and peopled by colorful beggars, drunkards,

priests, and madmen, indicates his romanticism. "What

Yeats would have liked would have been an eighteenth-

century Ireland of his own imagining. He disliked the

political and argumentative turmoil of revolutionary

Ireland; he would scarcely have thought that the order

which had emerged was sufficiently picturesque to produce

poetry" (p. 5).

Winters explains Yeats's cosmology in Section I but reserves his principal observations on the quality

of the system to Part II where he analyzes three poems which depend heavily upon it: "Leda and the Swan," "Two 134

Songs from a Play, 11 and "The Second Coming." Summing up the philosophical problems suggested by "Leda and the

Swan," Winters notes: ". . . if we are to take the high rhetoric of the poem seriously, we must really believe that sexual union is a form of the mystical experience, that history proceeds in cycles of two thousand years each, and th a t the rape o f Leda inaugurated a new c y cle; or at least we must believe that many other people have believed these things and that such ideas have seriously affected human thinking and feeling. But no one save

Yeats has ever believed these things, and we are not sure that Yeats really believed them. These constitute his private fairy tale, which he sometimes took seriously and sometimes did not" (p. 8 ).

It might be well to note here the difference in tone between Winters' analysis of the philosophical errors in Crane and his analysis of those of Yeats. Winters dis approves of Crane's ideas but nowhere does he doubt the man's sincerety. To Winters, Crane's tragedy stems from his blind faith in leaders who were themselves misled. On the other hand, Winters makes clear that he doubts Yeats's sincerity and, as a result, the essay is proportionately more caustic in tone.

Because he refuses to accept either Yeats's theories or his sincerity, Winters finds "The Second Coming" 135

an unacceptable e f f o r t based on "a home-made mythology and

a loose assortment of untenable social attitudes" (p. 10).

Whether or not one agrees with Winters' assessment of

Yeats, he must see the consistency of the moralist position

from which Winters views the poet. Here is a poet, says

Winters, who disregards all the great thinkers and ideas

of the past to present muddled, confused, and insupport

able ideas in grand rhetoric for the naive reader, seduced

by the power of language, to accept on sight. How can one

possibly come to understand human experience from this

p o sitio n ?

In Part III Winters takes up the two Byzantium

poems. His objections here are based on Yeats's highly

ornamental style characterized by his reliance on medie

val symbolism and his careless use of metaphor. For

example, in "Sailing to Byzantium" Winters objects to

Yeats's phrase "perne in a gyre," stating: "The phrase,

however, is bad in two ways: first, it gives us the

images of the sages stepping from the wall and then spin

ning like tops or dervishes,- second, it does not really

mean this, but is a dead metaphor for the return to life"

(p. 11). To Winters this is one of many "unrealized"

figures of speech Yeats likes to use. in the two Byzan

tium poems, Winters finds excitement for its own sake and carelessness of diction. Needless to say, he does not find good poetry.

Section IV deale with "Among School Children," a

poem almost universally regarded as one of Yeats's best.

Winters, however, does not find it so, faulting Yeats

for his penchant toward self-dramatization, cliche's, and

careless diction. Winters compares the Yeatsian inability

to discriminate between the dancer and the dance to ideas

found in Emerson's "Blight" but finds Emerson the better w r ite r .

Part V is devoted to the poems written about

Yeats's friends and acquaintances. in these Winters sees excessive hyperbole and dramatization. He sees "in Memory of Major Robert Gregory" as a good example of many of the principal faults in Yeats's poetry — dead metaphor, slovenly execution, and loose structure. He adds: "Yeats tells us that he had hoped in this poem to comment on everyone whom he had ever loved or admired but that

Gregory’s death took all his heart for speech. He had managed to w r ite tw elve stan zas o f e ig h t lin e s each, how ever, before he stopped; but this remark serves as a kind of apology for the loose structure of the poem— a structure which remains loose in spite of the apology" (p. 16).

Adopting a slightly different technique at the end of Part

V, Winters discusses Yeats's use of metrics in "The

Municipal Gallery Revisited." Even here Yeats comes off 137

badly for W inters fin d s the lin e s awkward and the meter

dependent on mispronunciation of such words as "revolu

tionary" and "Ireland." Winters cites a similar abuse

in "Easter, 1916" with such words as "companion" and

"sensitive." in the former it is necessary to add a

syllable; in the latter, to subtract one.

In Part VI Winters takes up those poems of Yeats

for which he has some admiration. His favorite is "The

Wild swans at Coole," for which he offers his own inter

pretation. if one were to limit himself to Winters'

discussion of this single poem, he would doubtless assume

that his admiration for Yeats is unqualified. As men

tioned in Chapter one, this supposed deviation from what

has previously been seen as almost total disapproval is

not inconsistent with Winters' moralistic criticism. As

critic Winters evaluates each poem individually on the

basis of its merits, an act which separates him from the

moralist critics of Chapter One, who tend to regard the

poet as either good or bad and who tend to transfer this

attitude to all the works of that particular poet.

There are oth er poems in S ection VI for which

Winters expresses some admiration ("I am of Ireland," "For

Anne Gregory," "Crazy Jane Grown Old Looks a t the Dancers"), but in each case he takes the position that although good,

the poem fails to achieve greatness because of the 138 slightness or particularity of its subject matter.

The conclusion of the essay, part VII, gives

Winters' evaluation of Yeats. To Winters, Yeats is the antithesis of the great poet. Attempting to follow in the footsteps of the French Symbolists, he failed. His extensive use of private symbols, says Winters, makes his work unnecessarily obscure and his didacticism, in view of his ridiculous ideas, is contemptible. Why then has Yeats been so h ig h ly p raised by modern c r i t i c s ?

Winters explains: "His reputation is easily accounted for. in the first place there is real talent scattered through his work; in the second place our time does not recognize any relationship between thought and poetry, between motive and emotion; in the third place, Yeats's power of self-assertion, his bardic tone, overwhelmed his readers" (p. 23). This bardic tone, the proclama tion of personal greatness, has, says Winters, seduced modern critics and poetry readers into an affirmative response to the poet. The results have been unfortunate.

Winters notes; "He has thus become a standard of judg ment for critics, with the result that the work of better poets has been obscured or minimized; and he has become a model for emulation, with the result that the work of a good many talented poets has been damaged beyond repair" (p. 23). 139

in analyzing the essay on Yeats one cannot help noticing how carefully Winters follows the five steps

listed as basic to the critical process in ln_ Defense of

Reason in order to arrive at a moral evaluation. His judgment of Yeats's poetry, while not universally shared, follows his moralist attitude toward art and is totally consistent with his critical position. Even if one dis agrees completely with Winters' assessment of Yeats, he is left with the problem posed by Winters at the beginning of the pamphlet: "We have been told many times that we do not have to take the ideas of Yeats seriously in order to appreciate his poetry; but if this is true, Yeats is the first poet of whom it has ever been true . . . (p. 3)."

Even a Yeats a fic io n a d o should have a d i f f i c u l t time r e solving this dilemma.

Wallace Stevens and Jones very

Wallace Stevens and Jones very -- what could be a more unlikely combination? And yet, the two poets— one a twentieth century atheistic hedonist, the other a nineteenth century mystic — have one thing in common in terms of Winters' criticism. Although neither takes a philosophical position with which Winters can agree

(though he is more sympathetic with Very's position) both have written poetry based on their philosophical- 140 theological views which Winters greatly admires.

Tracing Stevens' poetry in an essay subtitled

"The Hedonist's Progress" (found in IDOR pp. 431-459)

Winters finds that Stevens' earlier poems, which show strong traces of romanticism, are superior to the later ones in which the concepts are more fully realized. That is, the balance between motive and emotion found in the earlier poems decays rapidly toward the middle and end of Stevens' literary career. Furthermore, Winters feels it is Stevens' philosophy that led him into error.

In spite of the fact that the philosophical tendencies which Winters regards as responsible for

Stevens' later decay are present in "Sunday Morning" the critic has great admiration for this poem, considering it possibly the greatest American poem of our century.

For one thing, Stevens, unlike Yeats, presents a way of looking at human experience which has been shared by a number of others. As Winters explains: "Now I am not, myself, a hedonist of any variety; my dislike for the philosophy is profound, and I believe that it has, in the long run, done serious damage to the style of Wallace

S teven s. But I know that h e d o n ists e x i s t , and the s ta te of mind portrayed in the poem seems proper to them, and moreover, it seems beautifully portrayed" (IDOR, p. 476).

In the second place, says Winters, the poem, although it 141

describes the uncertainty experienced by human beings as

they consider their mortal state, is not rendered with

uncertainty but rather with sureness of technique, sen

sitivity of detail, and richness of language. Winters

sees Stevens' use of language as essentially classical.

He comments: "The language has the greatest possible dignity and subtlety, combined with perfect precision.

The imminence of absolute tragedy is felt and recorded, but the integrity of the feeling mind is maintained" (p.

4 4 7 ). Thus we fin d W inters' adm iration for "Sunday

Morning" is not the result of Stevens' philosophical position but is in his rendering of it.

The philosophical problems, delicately handled by

Stevens in "Sunday Morning," become more prominent in h is

later poetry, says Winters, leading to the decay of his genius. These qualities, enumerated by Winters in the essay, are neither surprising nor unfamiliar. in "Sunday

Morning" Stevens deifies emotions themselves rather than the understanding of them. Winters sees this as an example of romantic error. in the sixth stanza of the poem the lady experiences ennui at the suggestion of paradise as a mere emulation of life on earth. Winters recalls here the romantic tendency to search for excite ment and novelty of experience. He associates the ten dency toward pantheism, suggested as an alternative to 143

decay of Steven's talent. Comparing the anti-moralist

philosophy of the poem with the critical doctrine of g Poe w in ters adds:

. . . though Stevens is ridiculing himself and his artists, he is ridiculing his old Christian woman, the representative of the moralistic point of view, even more severely: he i s o ffe r in g h is op in ion as more n early tenable than hers, notwithstanding the fact that he cannot offer his opinion with real seriousness. Stevens' self ridicule is as irrational in its way as Poe's sentimentalism, and like that sentimentalism springs from a doctrine which eliminates the possibility of the rational understanding of experience and of a moral judgment deriving therefrom .... (p. 435)

Although Winters charges Stevens with romantic e rro r, he n o n eth e less, adm ires a number o f h is poems.

The complexity of Stevens' way of looking at experience, however limited and the classical structure of his poetry, says winters, have combined to make him a major twentieth-century figure. He is, in Winters' estimation, far superior to Yeats and Crane, whose writing styles are inclined to be as slipshod as the philosophical positions which spawned them.

As in Stevens, Winters finds in Jones very, nine teenth century poet, mystic, and contemporary of Emerson a theological-philosophical position with which he cannot agree, with which he is "at every turn unsympathetic" (p.

269). Yet, he finds very's position more supportable than

Q James A. Harrison, ed. "The Poetic Principle," The Complete Works of Edgar A llen Poe, 17 (New York: Thomas Y. Crumwell and Co-# n .d . ) , 267. he does Stevens' for three reasons: first, it bears no

relationship to the romanticism that Winters detests;

second, it is based on a belief in moral absolutism;

third, it is sincere. The essay on very, found in in

Defense of Reason (pp. 262-282) is entitled "Jones very

and R. W. Emerson: Aspects of New England Mysticism."

In the essay Winters compares Very, the true mystic, with

Emerson, the false one. Like Emerson, very has been

classified as both a Unitarian and a transcendentalist.

Consequently, Winters begins his discussion by denying

the validity of these classifications. He avers: "/ver^7 was a Unitarian only by virtue of the historical con

nection between the Unitarian and Puritan Churches and by virtue of the wide hospitality of the Unitarians.

He was not a transcendentalist at all, but a Christian, and a dogmatic one . . ."(p. 263).

From t h is p oin t on the d iffe r e n c e s between Emerson and Very multiply. While Winters accuses Emerson of surrendering to impulse and intuition, he sees very as undergoing elaborate self-exarpination and criticism .

Emerson's irrational surrender to emotion is compared to what Winters sees as very's rational submission to God.

As Winters explains: "Very believed that he had sur rendered himself to God, but it was to the God of

Christianity, who disapproved of surrender to emotion and 145 whose moral standards had been revealed" (p. 267). The basic difference between the two, is, then, that while

Emerson was a moral relativist, Very was a moral absolutist. Says winters: "Emerson tried to explain to Very that truth is relative, and very tried to point out to Emerson that truth is absolute" (p. 271).

To examine Winters' comments on very's poetry is to understand why Winters, in spite of differing with

Very's theological-philosophical position, admired the poet's work. For brief analysis four poems will suffice:

"The Hand and Foot," "Yourself," "The Garden," and "The

Created." in "The Hand and Foot" Winters sees "the perfect dogmatic definition of Very's position as a New

England mystic" (p. 264). The merits that Winters finds in the poem include a feeling of the poet's sincere con viction (as we have already seen, a very important quality to Winters) and a "haunting precision with which feeling as well as dogma is rendered" (pp. 265-66). These are p r e c is e ly the a ttr ib u te s W inters valu es in "Sunday Morning" or, for that matter, in any poetry. Thus Winters sees the poem as a moral statement artistically rendered. The poem

"Yourself," addressed to the reader, expresses very's sense of mystical alienation from the reader, the d iffi culty of communicating an experience which is non-communi cable and non-intelligible to the person who has never 146

shared it. Again Winters is impressed with Very's sense

of conviction, explaining: "... while recognizing that

Very's mystical poetry is imperfectly relevant to us, we

may get what we can from it, and since that which we can

obtain is frequently of great value, we can scarcely be

losers in the relationship" (p. 272).

Very's restraint and precision are classical

qualities for which Winters frequently expresses admira

tion. "The Garden" embodies these qualities in a plain

style, which, says Winters, has brought it few admirers.

Clearly stating that very's theological position differs

from his own (". . .my own sympathy with the author’s

religious views is largely one of a kind of hypothetical

acquiescence . . ."p. 273), he, nevertheless, praises the

poem highly as an artistic rendering of the comtemplative

sensibility of the mystic. The moralist position, as

embodied by Winters, respects the understanding, evaluating,

and shaping of experience as the highest goal of the

artist, and Winters, as we have seen, does not demand

that the artist share his own views — only that he

possess moral conviction in his search for truth. All of

the virtues embodied in very's poetry, says Winters, may be found in "The Created, " which he describes as "the best single poem that Very composed." of this poem,

Winters writes; "We have here perfection of structure, 147 perfection and power of phrase, great moral scope, at

least by way of generality of implication, and sublimity of conception" (p. 280). Although the intention of this poem would appear to be Calvinistic, Winters sees in it a universality that transcends dogma "for it may, as in so much devotional but non-mystical poetry, be accepted merely as an allegorical representation of a moral state - of the condition of Socrates just before drinking the hem lock instead of a few hours later" (p. 281).

Now we have a basis for comparison. We have examined Winters' views on two poets whose philosophical views have been destructive to their poetry - Crane and

Yeats - and two poets who, in spite of their philosophical views, have created great poetry. Where lies the differ ence? Basically, what Winters has demanded is sincerity, conviction, truth, and an understanding of human experi ence. To Winters, Crane is sincere, but he neither sees truth nor understands the human experience; Yeats has neither conviction nor truth; Stevens and very (in their best poetry) have conviction, sincerity, and a limited but profound understanding of moral truth.

We now turn to two poets of conviction whose per ception, according to Winters, is not limited by their philosophies: Edwin Arlington Robinson and T. Sturge

Moore. 148

Edwin A rlington Robinson

In 1946 New Directions published a book, Edwin 10 Arlington Robinson by Winters. in the book Winters

describes and discusses Robinson's work, explains the

philosophic and literary influences on Robinson, and

seeks to evaluate the poet's achievement and position in

resp ec t to modern p o etry . U ltim a tely , W inters fin d s

Robinson a great poet, his reputation resting securely

on fifteen to eighteen major works. The evaluation does

not carry with it, however, Winters' blanket approval of

all of Robinson's poetry for such a position would have

to be inconsistent with the Winters canon. Certain

virtues can be found in the poems which Winters greatly

admires; certain vices are pointed out in the poems which he does not.

The philosophical influences at work on Robinson,

the by-products of his New England rearing, had to be

Calvinism, Unitarianism, and transcendentalism. Of the

three, winters sees the strongest influence in Cal vinism; the weakest, in transcendentalism. From Cal vinism, which once had ascendency in New England, Robinson

10Yvor Winters, Edwin Arlington Robinson (Norfolk: New Directions, 1946, rep. 1971). The later book contains passages from Robinsori's work which the earlier edition was unable to include. All page references refer to the later edition. developed "moral energy" (p. 14). The Unitarianism which displaced it stressed man's moral obligations. The heavy emphasis on moralism, says Winters, is translated into

Robinson's work in themes of suffering and endurance. The

influence of Emerson on Robinson is small, described by

Winters as "fragmentary, occasional and contrary to the main d ir e c tio n o f h is thought and achievement" (p. 4 ) , but it accounts for a certain "intellectual laziness" (p. 16) which Winters sometimes finds in the poet not in an eccentricity of style (as in, for example, Frost) but in

"loose thinking" and "failures of structure" (p. 17).

Winters adds, however; "It is the moralistic tradition which predominates in Robinson . . . in the choice of matter, this shows itself in the moral curiosity with regard to the particular case; in the realm of style, in honesty of statement and clarity of form, in the conduct of life, in immutable adherence to a purpose"

(p. 17).

Philosophically Winters classifies Robinson as a "counter-romantic" (p. 27), finding evidence to sup port his claim in "Hillcrest," a poem which Winters believes "expresses a pretty explicit negation of the essential ideas of the romantic movement, especially as that movement has been represented by the Emersonian tradition" (p. 31). in the poem, Winters explains, 150

Robinson characterizes life as full of pain and suffering,

without easy solutions. He adds: "it is a poem on the

tragedy of human life and on the value of contemplations;

it expresses neither despair nor triumph, but rather

recognition and evaluation" (p. 31). Robinson frequently

uses this theme, other examples of which occur in "Eros

Turannos," "Luke Havergal," and "Veteran Sirens."

The virtues Winters finds in Robinson's best poems

spring directly from the classical tradition: a plainness

of style which Winters describes as accuracy "with the con

scientiousness of genius" (p. 5), "plain honesty" (p. 2),

and brevity which results in "a concentration of meaning

and power" (p. 33), combined with a rational structure

which is "packed with thought in its detail," and "per

fectly clear in its meaning and development ..." (p. 3 7 ).

Furthermore, there is an adjustment of feeling to motive

which results in the balance and control Winters finds to

be a primary attribute of the great poet. He explains:

". . . Robinson not only scrutinizes his thought but also

is watchful of his feeling. His New England heritage here

is not a defect, even though he chooses occasionally to

ridicule it; the feeling which ought to be motivated by his

comprehension of the matter is what he seeks to express

. . . and since his matter is often profound, this exact adjustment of feeling to motive results on certain 151 occasions in poetry of extremely great value" (p. 65).

Such virtues can be found in the poems already named as w e ll as in "The Wandering Jew," "Rembrandt to Rembrandt," and "The Three Taverns," to name a few.

On the oth er hand, R obinson's long poems and h is p h ilo so p h ic a l poems e x h ib it some f a u lt s which, according to Winters, occasionally bear relationship to the small streak of Emersonianism which emerges at times in Robin son. One of these faults is described by Winters as

"occasional indications of a romantic attitude" (p. 57), which he demonstrates in "Flammonde." Winters objects to this poem on a moral level for it "praises an indi vidual whom one might characterize as the sensitive para site or as the literary or academic sponge" (p. 57), but he also finds the language both "lachrymose" and senti mental, adding: "The classicism, the precision, of

Robinson's great work is not in this poem; there is noth ing here of it but an empty mannerism" (p. 58). Still another Emersonian quality which crops up on occasion in Robinson is illustrated by the character of Zofe* in

"King jasper." Zo£, according to winters, "represents vitality mistaken for intelligence in a traditionally

Emersonian manner" (p. 140).

Robinson exhibits some faults, however, which bear no r e la tio n s h ip to Emerson. P r in c ip a l among th ese are his loquacity, his obscurity, and his cleverness. The tendency toward loquacity, says Winters, is generally characteristic of his long poems, a good example being

"Tasker Norcross." The obscurity tends to operate in two different ways. First there is the obscurity of such poems as "The Mill" and "The Whip" in which Robinson uses indirection and subtlety combined with a metaphysical tone (p. 50). Winters comments: "All of the necessary information is given us in pretty clear statements; but it is given fragmentarily, and interspersed with comments which are likely to be misleading" (p. 51). The second type of obscurantism is to be found in the longer narra tive poems such as "Roman Bartholomew" and "Cavender's

House." The technique used by Robinson in these poems involves a withholding of information which puzzles the reader to such an extent that half the poem has been read before the reader begins to grasp the situation. Winters, in summing up the e f f e c t o f t h is technique on "cavender's

House, " which occupies pages 961-1007 of the Collected

Poems com plains: "The poem is thus a study o f con science; but it is not until we have got to about page

990— not, that is, till we have read about thirty pages and are about seventeen pages from the end --that we know enough about the action to understand the poem as it progresses; and when we have arrived at that point, the 153 portion which we have read is not a clear sustaining structure, but is remembered as a confused emotional haze from which we have at last managed to disentangle a few simple but necessary facts" (p. 124). Finally, Winters • ^ objects to Robinson's occasional attempts at cleverness.

"Richard Cory" with its surprise ending, is one example, but there are others.

In spite of finding occasional defects in Robin son's poetry, Winters' final assessment of the poet is extrem ely h igh , based f in a lly on a number o f poems which he classifies as great. Three of these are "Eros Turan- nos," "The Wandering Jew," and "Three Taverns." "Eros

Turannos" is a poem of particular tragedy (an area in which, Winters feels, Robinson exhibits great strength).

Notwithstanding, the poem has great brevity and power in its ability to universalize the tragedy of a particular woman, a tragedy induced by the tyranny of a destructive love and her submission to it. in this poem we have

Robinson's oft-repeated theme of stoical acceptance and endurance. The poem, neither romantic nor idealistic, transforms the woman's attitude toward experience into moral judgment. Robinson's ability to take the particular and from it to create the universal is demonstrated also in "The Wandering Jew," a poem which Winters feels may be

Robinson's greatest. The poem, says Winters, examines a '•spiritual vice . . . the vice of pride in one’s own identity, a pride which w ill not allow one to accept a greater wisdom from without even when one recognizes that the wisdom is there and is greater than one's own ..." (p. 42). The poem, by revealing a tragic awareness of the human situation, becomes moral evalua tion. Winters does not find it either didactic or philosophic. In fact, he finds Robinson dull and loquacious when he attempts such poetry. Instead, it is a "poetry of ideas" which arise from "the considera tion of a particular case" (p. 37). Still another poem for which Winters has unqualified admiration is "The

Three Taverns," a dramatic monolog spoken by the Apostle

Paul. Winters praises Robinson both for his lack of ornamentation and for his technique in this poem, stating: "/He7 handles the material as it should be handled; he does not expand it, but he contracts it to essentials; he exhibits the greatness of the man, not the mannerisms of his speech. The poem is bare of all decoration, and is written in a blank verse which is compact and well-organized. It is one of the greatest poems of its kind and length in English" (pp. 150-51).

In a final assessment of Robinson, Winters places him among the greatest poets in English. His reasons are obvious. Robinson's awareness of the human 155 situation and its tragic implications makes him a mora list; his style, "which was free from the provincialism of time and place" (p. 164), marks him as a classicist, a philosophical and literary stance of which Winters heartily approves.

T. stu rge Moore

Winters classifies Moore, like Robinson, as a counter-rom antic. His essay on Moore in Forms o f D is covery, while relatively shortV" strongly emphasizes

Moore's anti-romantic qualities and his decidedly moral tone. Winters praises Moore for rejecting common roman tic attitudes, in his poem "The Vigil," for example,

Moore rejects the traditional romantic consolation for and asserts the finality of death. In "On Four Poplars," he maintains the integrity of the individual w ill, find ing fault with any attempt to violate it. Still another poem, "Plans for a Midnight Picnic," says winters, al though not one of Moore's best, attacks the pathetic fallacy and thus serves to illustrate further Moore's distaste for romanticism. Although Moore objects to romanticism, Winters finds his style not entirely immune to its influences. He explains: "It may seem strange that a poet so consciously opposed to romantic philosophy should be so corrupted by the style which romantic

11PP. 234-239. 156

philosophy had generated, but the essential characteristics

of the style had dominated poetry for more than a century

and a h a lf when Moore began to w rite" (p. 2 42). In

addition, Winters sees Moore's style as being somewhat

influenced by the French Symbolists. He describes

Moore's poem "To Silence" as "a passive acceptance of

pure sensation . . . which may be temporary /and7 which

may offer spiritual refreshment and return one richer

to life . . . or as something that may tempt or addict

one to greater and greater degrees of 'silence' . . .

until one reaches the final Silence which is death" (p.

243). Winters' objection to either alternative bears

direct relation to his moralist position. He asserts:

"Both kinds o f surrender — to sen sa tio n on the one hand

and simply to death on the other — draw man away from

the full experience of life while the experience is

available" (p. 244).

Yet, in spite of occasional lapses into the roman

ticism he rejects, Moore, according to Winters, is most

strongly motivated by rationalism and moralism. Describ

ing Moore as a man of "a great deal of common-sense in

an age which exhibits little," Winters adds: "He was

aware of the unclassifiable act of judgment, both in the

composition of the work of art and the evaluation of the work of art; he was aware of the dangers inherent in the 157

failure to relate this act of judgment to a controlling

reason ..." (p. 235). Thus Moore is to Winters one of

the great English poets. Winters continues: "His thought

about human nature and poetry alike appears most clearly

in his poems and plays. Briefly, he believed in the

development of all the human faculties; he believed that

the cultivation of one potentiality of human nature (and

hence of art) at the expense of the rest was an error and

might be a tragic error" (p. 236). Winters concedes this

idea is not new with Moore but adds that it is, nonethe

less, true.

The u n iv e r s a lity o f Moore and Robinson bears an

interesting contrast to the particularity of Yeats and

Crane. Yeats's view of the world can in no way be seen

as universal since it is obviously dependent upon a

philosophy particular only to Yeats. Crane's, in con

trast, is based on the romantic fallacy, which, although

shared by a number o f o th e r s, n o n eth eless f a i l s to

communicate universal truth because it is based on the

romantic error of self-expression. The philosophical

positions of Stevens and very have their own limitations, as we have seen, but these limitations have not been destructive to their finest poems because although their

ideas are not widespread, they are keenly felt and pre cisely recorded. Hence, it becomes obvious that if one 158 understands Winters' moralist position, he can anticipate the critic's response to particular poets.

On the other hand, certain poets have been u lti mately destroyed by the technique (usually an outgrowth of a given philosophical position) which has made their poetry — rather than universal — individuated and eccentric. These we turn to next, showing them in con trast to several poets Winters considers to be master- s t y l i s t s .

Gerard Manly Hopkins

At the end of his rather lengthy essay on Hopkins in The Function of Criticism, Winters consigns the poet to minor status while on the basis of five or six of his 12 best poems conceding him a place among the top twelve or fourteen British poets of the nineteenth century. His chief objection to Hopkins is related to the poet's style, a style marred by "faults of conception and of execution"

(p. 153).

Basically, one can narrow Winters' criticism of

Hopkins' style down to five principal objections; (1)

Hopkins' tendency toward emotional over-emphasis at the

12 These include "The Habit of Perfection," "The Valley of the Elwy," "inversnaid," "St. Alphonsus Rodriguez, " and "To him who ever thought with love of me. " 159

expense of reason; (2) Hopkins' structure, which, says

Winters, is based on "willful deformation of language"

(p. 117); (3) Hopkins' inaccuracy of description and

subsequent lack of precision; (4) his tendency to sub

stitute stereotyped assertion for meaningful judgment;

and (5) his frequent use of mechanical repetition re

sulting in monotony and mannerism.

Winters' distaste for emotionalism at the expense

of reason has already been duly noted. In describing and

evaluating Hopkins' sonnet "No Worse There is None," he

writes: "The rhythm is fascinating in itself, but it

does not exist in itself, it exists in the poem. It is

a rhythm based on the principle of violent struggle with

its governing measure, and it contributes to the violence of feeling in the total poem" (p. 112). Winters' conten

tion is that Hopkins has substituted massive emotion for motive, and that the poem furthermore lacks rational structure. Hopkins' tendency to over-emotionalize is directly related to romanticism with its overwhelming stress on self-expression. Citing Arthur Mizener as authority, Winters points out that Hopkins' own time was characterized by a fusion of romanticism and erudition, which tended to create eccentric poets and poetry and that

Hopkins assimilated these ideas both on the historical and personal levels. On the other hand, Winters adds, as a Catholic priest Hopkins should have also been strongly influenced by Catholic doctrine which "exalts reason, teaches distrust of impulse, and insists on a measure of conformity to familiar norms" (p. 137). Winters' solution to the problem lies in the esthetics of Thomas Aquinas.

As previously pointed out in Chapter II, Winters greatly admired Thomistic philosophy, but he did not agree with

Aquinas' view of art. Says Winters: "Thomas is guilty of one confusion, for example which is common among estheticians: he appears to find a common quality in what we call the beauty of nature and in what we call the beauty of art." Winters faults this idea, stating: "A beautiful natural object, however, is not in itself an act of human judgment, it is outside of the moral order.

And although a man's apprehension of such an object, and evaluation of it, is an act of judgment and within the moral order, this apprehension and evaluation can occur only in an act of criticism or in a descriptive work of art" (p. 140).

Regardless of how Hopkins fell into romantic error, the fact remains that he is guilty of it. Winters parti cularly finds the tendency toward over-emotionalism in the poem most critics agree to be Hopkins' greatest: "The

Windhover." Agreeing with most critics on the interpreta tion of the bird as symbolic of Christ's perfection, he 161 adds: "... but the haecceity of the bird and the haecceity of Christ are very different matters indeed, and of the haecceity of Christ we are told precisely nothing in the poem. Unless Christ is symbolized, however, or unless something far greater than the bird is sym bolized, then the ecstatic tone of the poem is not justi fied; and in fact it is not justified if Christ is symbolized, for it could be justified only by an indica tion of those qualities of Christ which would serve the purpose. The poem is romantic both in its over-wrought emotionalism and in its carelessness" (p. 135).

Hopkins' lack of regard for motive and reason is further exemplified by his distortion of language in the interest of sprung rhythm. Winters denigrates Hopkins' explanation, pointing out that Greene also used sprung rhythm but w ithout damage to the language. Thus Winters cites the difference between the two poets: "Greene's meter is based on the natural stress of the language and is plainly evident without artificial help, whereas no one would suspect the intentions of Hopkins if he had not marked the lines" (p. 117). Winters sees Hopkins' meter as violent, grotesque, and indefensible, the purpose being to support the intensification of unmotivated emotion. He adds: "What we have in Hopkins' more difficult construc tions, then, is a very complex accentual meter, in which 162 the accents are for the most part the irresponsible in ventions of the author rather than native elements of the

language ..." (p. 123). But Hopkins takes other "liber ties" with the language, according to Winters. Often one cannot be sure which of a number of meanings he should assign to a word the poet has used. Words such as "plough" and "buckle" in "The Windhover" are good examples of the confusion brought about by distorting language. Winters c i t e s three d iff e r e n t a u th o r itie s — Pick, McLuhan, and

Ruggles — on the meaning of "buckle," and (with a bit of irony) adds a fourth of his own. Although two of the inter pretations would doubtless lead to violations of grammar,

Winters would not dismiss the possibility of their cor rectness since Hopkins seems to have had little concern with that particular aspect of language.

Furthermore, says Winters, although Hopkins ob viously loved description, his poetry being heavily laden with adjectives, he was far more concerned with sound than with meaning. Thus a third fault Winters finds in Hopkins' technique is his inaccuracy of description, two examples of which can be found in the sonnet "God's Grandeur."

The image of "shook foil," says Winters, either signifies tin foil (or gold-leaf) or a fencing foil. The effect of the former would be, says Winters, "an image of a madman

(or at least a remarkably eccentric man) brandishing a metal bouquet" (p. 125); the latter choice leaves one with grammatical problems. The second inaccuracy in

volves the "ooze of oil" which, according to Hopkins,

"gathers to a greatness, " which results in a similar problem. Winters argues logically that such is not the quality of oil, or that if Hopkins intended for the image

to suggest o il gathered from olives we have another gram matical problem. The point is that even if these images

could be considered accurate, they would not begin to

suggest the glory of God because of their triviality.

Winters finds similar objections even in the Hopkins poems he admires, such as "Patience, hard thing," in which the

images of the ivy and the honeycomb "dull the meaning in stead of sharpening it /and7 distract the attention

instead of focussing it" (p. 150).

Related to Hopkins' careless use of words, accord

ing to Winters, is his dependence on stereotyped language rather than precise language to produce a desired effect.

In "Duns Scotus's oxford," for example, Winters criticizes

Hopkins for his use of "empty epithets" (p. 126) which assert the greatness of Scotus without offering evidence, reason, or definition in support. Another such example can be found in "The Windhover," of which Winters writes:

"The crucial statement of the poem, regardless of the inter pretation which one accepts, appears to occur in the second 164 and third lines of the first tercet, yet this statement is merely an assertion of importance and of excitement, it is not an explanation and description" (pp. 134-35).

Finally, Winters finds Hopkins' use of language repetitious, monotonous, and mannered. Describing

"Carrion Comfort" as a typical example of "emotional in dulgence," Winters adds: "The meter is looser than that of 'No Worst,' and . . . meter and sentence-form alike become short, hard, over-emphatic, and monotonous in the sestet; and in the sestet also he twice falls into his trick of the mechanical repetition of sounds and form which mars so much of his work and is quite as definitely a mannerism in Hopkins as in Swinburne" (p. 149). Winters sees the same fault in other Hopkins poems, two examples of which are "I wake and feel to fell of the dark," and

"My own h eart le t me more have p i t y . " Of the la t t e r he adds: ". . . it is little more than a collection of mannerisms, a game of alliteration and other phonetic repetitions, and the diction and grammar of the last two lines are grotesque and clumsy" (p. 150).

Winters' five basic objections to Hopkins' poetry are directly related, as we have seen, to the poet's roman ticism. To the critic the poet's job is not narcissistic self-expression (that is, the communication of his own inscape) but "to arrive at a true judgment of his subject 16 5 whatever it may be" (p. 144). in the final analysis

Winters sees Hopkins as "a poet of fragments" whose poetry involves "a chaos of details afloat in vague emo tion" (p. 145), a potentially great poet whose work was fatally marred by technique.

T. S. Eliot

The poetry of T. S. Eliot is discussed by Winters both in Xn Defense of Reason and Forms of Discovery. In the former book Winters places Eliot with the group he calls the Decadents. in the latter, he refers to him as one of the Eccentrics. The titles change but not the over all evaluation. In order to understand Winters' basic objections to Eliot's poetry, one must first understand the two terms as winters uses them.

The decadent poet, according to Winters, possesses three qualities. in the first place, he is extremely sensitive to language, certainly an asset for a poet.

Secondly, his range is usually wide, another feature in his favor. Finally, however, there is something definitely lacking in his poetry — stemming from his failure to understand rationally the experience of which he writes.

Thus he generally follows what Winters terms associationist procedures, recreating experience in terms of sensory impressions and thereby eliminating any possibility of 166 understanding it. This limitation he seeks to disguise by his insistence that poetry be experience itself rather than the evaluation of it.

The e c c e n tr ic poet has some o f the same q u a l i t i e s , particularly in his use of associationist techniques, but

Winters extends the faults (thus explaining the limita tions suggested in the decadents) to include the philo sophic errors into which he naturally falls. Of this group of poets Winters writes:

/The%7 are a l l m otivated by the same ideas about poetry and human nature which destroyed the poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen turies; they are nominalists, relativists, associationists, sentimentalists, and denigra- tors of the rational mind .... Like the earlier poets they have lost control of poetic structure; that is, of language, of their mode of understanding, of their own being .... Their virtues, in combination with their defects, seem to have generated an unfortunate charac teristic which is common to all of them: a pretentiousness of style of one kind or another. (FOD, pp. 323-24)

While Winters' primary criticism of Hopkins was in his use of language, his principal objection to Eliot must be seen as structural. Eliot's associationist pro cedures, says Winters, lead inevitably to the surrender of form to su b je c t. Such surrender can be evidenced in The

Waste Land, Eliot's poem about the spiritual disintegration o f modern l i f e . W inters, as has been p ointed out p re viously, contends that no matter what the subject of a poem is, even if it involves extreme disunity or disorientation, 168

500). Nor is Winters impressed with Eliot's use of

language in his other poetry. He comments: "Eliot's q uatrains move h ea v ily ; even Donne can manage the t e t r a meter line with greater skill. Eliot's free verse is

comparably monotonous; the monotony of the movement, com bined with the journalistic detail, achieves an effect which appears to pass as profound, or perhaps merely as ominous" (FOD, p. 321). These faults he points to particularly in "Burnt Norton," a poem of "sad little cliche's," dull rhythms, prosaic language, and sentimen tality, comparable to the works of Dyer and Collins in the eighteenth century. Winters regrets the fact that

Eliot has had so many imitators but believes it is because Eliot is so easy to imitate.

Thus the poetry of Eliot, like that of Hopkins

(although inferior to it in Winters' estimation), is marred by insoluble problems of structure and form. In some cases, Winters finds fault with the technical aspects of a poet's work but believes that in spite of these faults the poet's achievement is not inconsiderable. Such is the case with his analysis of Emily Dickinson.

Emily Dickinson

13 In two separate essays written some thirty years

■^These essays can be found in Iis Defense of Reason, pp. 283-299 and in Forms of Discovery, pp. 263-272. 169

apart, Winters declares Emily Dickinson to be one of the

great lyric poets of our language. Nevertheless, he points 9 out that Dickinson was guilty of a number of stylistic

e r r o r s. D eclaring her a p rim itiv e in the manner o f Grand

ma Moses, winters finds her style sometimes crude, her meter occasionally sing-song, her grammar at times faulty, and her poetry frequently obscure. in spite of these criticisms, Winters avers: ". . . the genius is there,

somehow indestructible" (FOD, p. 263). Before commenting on this assessment of Dickinson's work, it would perhaps be wise to examine the technical flaws for which Winters faults her.

Most of Dickinson's faults, according to Winters, are exemplified in her poem "I like to see it lap the miles," in which she indulges in a "silly playfulness which renders the poem abominable" (IDOR, p. 234). Two poems, both of greater power, tend toward crudity of expression also, but in these poems, "I started early, took my dog, and visited the sea," and "Twas warm at first, like us," Winters sees the virtues as far outweighing the faults. Of the former, he remarks in _ln Defense of Reason:

"Her playfulness is somewhat restrained and formalized"

(p. 286), and of the latter: "The stiffness of phrasing, as in the barbarously constructed fourth and twelfth lines, is allied to her habitual carelessness, yet in this poem 170 there is at least no triviality, and the imagery of the third stanza in particular has tremendous power" (IDOR, p. 291). Thus Winters is inclined to forgive the crudity if the poem is controlled, the proper feeling motivated, the quality of the moral judgment powerful. As a matter of fact. Winters feels that much of Dickinson's power may be associated with the primitive quality of her work, stemming from her lack of literary background, which kept her from emulating poets like Wordsworth and Tennyson.

Winters finds Dickinson's meter, adopted from the

Protestant hymn books and labeled Poulter's Measure, ranging from the sin g -so n g in her le s s e r poems to b r i l liant and masterful in her greater work, in the poem already cited, "I like to see it lap the miles," winters fin d s an alm ost "nursery rhyme" q u a lity to the lin e s , w hile in "There's a certain slant of light," she handles the same meter with virtuosity. It is significant and-characteris tic that Winters finds Dickinson's highest metrical achieve ment in the poetry with the greatest moral content. Dickin son's inability to deal lightly and gracefully with minor themes, says Winters, is closely related to the aura of moral Calvinism which surrounded her, yet, paradoxically, which enabled her to deal simply, directly, and powerfully with metaphysical themes.

Dickinson's tendency to be obscure at times can also 171 be attributed to the Calviniatic atmosphere that permeated nineteenth-century New England. The poem beginning "At half-past three a single bird" is a good example of obscurity throughout and ends with that particularly inexplicable word of which Dickinson was very fond -- circumference. Winters explains Dickinson's obscurantism as "a boldness in part, perhaps inherited from the earlier

New Englanders whose sense of divine guidance was so highly developed, whose humility of spirit was commonly so small

. . ." (IDOR, p. 287).

Although part of Dickinson's obscurity relates to the atmosphere in which she lived, much is related to her defiance of accepted usage of language. in examining

Winters' critical attitude toward technique, one inevitably finds him concerned with grammar, an interest not incon sistent with his moialist position. Classical qualities include dignity, restraint, and order, and grammar is inextricably bound to all of these, but most particularly to order. Thus Winters takes issue with the frequent gram matical lapses he finds in the work of Emily Dickinson, as illustrated in the poem already cited, "Twas warm at first like us." Lines eleven and twelve read, "it multiplied in difference/ As pride were all it could," an example of

"barbarous" grammar, according to Winters. Furthermore, in line four of the same poem, "Till all the scene be gone, " 172

Winters faults Dickinson for using "an unduly forced sub

junctive" (FOD, p. 269). Other examples of poor grammar,

says Winters, can be found in "The last night that she

lived," a poem which contains "a badly mixed figure and

at least two major grammatical blunders, in addition to a

little awkward inversion of an indefensible variety . . . "

(IDOR, p. 291). These are not isolated examples; the

grammatical faults here cited can be found over and over again in Dickinson’s poetry.

Yet, in spite of these deviations from form, these

lapses in technique (rather than because of them), the poems are o f great power. W inters' summing up o f the quality of Dickinson's poetry points to his great admira tion for her moral vision tempered with distress that her

style often failed to measure up to it. He writes:

. . . her New England heritage, though it made her life a moral drama, did not leave her life in moral confusion. It impoverished her in one respect, however: of all great poets, she is the most lacking in taste; there are innumerable beautiful lines and passages wasted in the desert of her crudities; her defects, more than those of any other great poet that I have read, are con stantly at the brink, or pushing beyond the brink o f her b e st poems .... But except by Melville, she is surpassed by no writer that this country has produced; she is one of the greatest lyric poets of all time. (IDOR, p. 299)

Post-Symbolists

Having examined poets guilty of what Winters condemns as errors in style and technique, some whose poetry has been 173 fatally marred and one whose poetry has transcended tech nical errors, we now turn to those poets Winters sees as m aster-stylists, most of whom belong in the category he calls "post-Symbolist."

Not all the poets who belong to this group came after the French Symbolists, although most of them did.

The principal quality characterizing the group is their use of post-Symbolist imagery combined with a structure of controlled association. To explain the meaning of post-

Sym bolist imagery, W inters uses two poems by Valery:

"Ebauche d 1un Serpent" and "Le C im etiere Marin." De sc r ib in g the poems as p h ilo so p h ic a l (and thus f u l l o f abstractions), he adds: "The sensory details are a part o f / t h e 7 statement - they are not ornament or background.

The language is often sensory and conceptual at the same time .... /that i£7 the visual and the intellectual are simultaneous - they cannot be separated in fact" (FOD, p. 252)."

Structurally the post-Symbolists most often use controlled association, a technique Winters explains in his essay on Churchill's "Dedication." The poem, says

Winters, "moves from point to point by association. The association, however, is carefully controlled by a plan which is rationally apprehensible and the transitions are never obscure .... The method makes for f l e x i b i l i t y 174 and complexity, without any loss of coherence" (FOD, pp.

143-44). The obvious virtue of such a technique, says

W inters, i s that i t allow s the poet ease o f movement com bined with broadness of range. He adds: "I believe that the greatest poems employing this method are the greatest poems that we have, and furthermore that the group of poets whom I shall now discuss are, a£ a_ group, the most impressive group in English" (p. 253).

Two of the poets already discussed, Emily Dickin son and Wallace Stevens, fall into this group but only in their greater poems, others are Frederick Goddard Tucker- man, Louise Bogan, Edgar Bowers, and N. S co tt Momaday. in order to further illustrate the qualities of post-Symbolist poetry, a closer examination of Winters' comments on two members o f the group, Tuckerman and Bowers, w i l l be h e lp f u l .

Tuckerman, contends winters, wrote without the benefit of models (that is, he pre-dates the French

Symbolists), but his achievement is nonetheless great, centered in one particular poem: "The Cricket." For this poem Winters reserves high praise, seeing it as perhaps the greatest poem of the nineteenth century in our language.

The structure of the poem is modeled after the odes of

Milton, Gray, Keats, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, a ll of which have certain principles in common: serious subject 175 matter, significant length, and relatively loose asso ciations 1 structure and imagery. The important difference between Tuckerman's poem and the poetry of

Milton and the others, says Winters, is that Tuckerman used controlled association in both structure and imagery thereby creating a greater poem than did any of the aforementioned poets.

The associations 1 procedures in the poem allow

Tuckerman to view the cricket in a variety of ways: as a member of the insect world, as a small part of the vast universe, as the elemental and mystical part of human nature, as the primitive and non-human, and as the mournful symbol evoking thoughts of death represented in these lines from Section Ills

Thou b r in g e st to o , dim a c cen ts from the grave To him who w alketh when the day is dim, Dreaming of those who dream no more of him, With edged remembrances of joy and pain; And heyday looks and laughter come again: Forms that in happy sunshine lie and leap, With faces where but now a gap must be, Renunciations and partitions deep And perfect tears, and crowning vacancy!

The fifth section of the poem, says Winters, draws all the symbols together into the preternatural desire of the poet to understand the crickets, a longing which he knows must be denied fulfillment because of the unabridge- able chasm between man and nature. The denial results in the poet's triumphal acceptance of the human situation. 176

It matters not. Behold! the autumn goes, The shadow grows, The moments take hold o f e te r n ity ; Even while we stop to wrangle or repine Our lives are gone- Like thinnest mist, Like yon escaping color in the tree; Rejoice! rejoice! whilst yet the hours exist - Rejoice or mourn, and let the world swing on Unmoved by cricket song of thee or me.

The theme of the poet carries over into the imagery which acts not as ornament but as an inherent element of meaning. Winters explains: "Tuckerman's landscape is that of the local fields and the bright sun light; but his wilderness is that of the mind, both conscious and unconscious, and it involves the loss of his love, the despair of his life:

hearts wild with love and woe, Closed eyes, and kisses that would not let go. (p. 261)

He adds: "The thought of the poem exists in the imagery and develops through it" (p. 262) . Permit me to quote another short section to illustrate. The poet perceives that he must survive in spite of the sub-human realms which he can never totally understand. He writes:

. . . lik e The ceaseless simmer in the summer grass To him who toileth in the windy field, Or where the sunbeams strike, Naught in innumerable numerousness, So might I much possess, So much must y ie ld .

Post-Symbolist imagery, unlike the ornamental imagery em ployed by such writers as Milton and Donne, is inseparable 177 from the poem.

Edgar Bowers, another one of the post-Symbolists, differs from Tuckerman in that he was born into an in tellectual climate which nurtured the post-Symbolists.

The soil for post-Symbolism was prepared strangely enough by the romantics, both English and French, who placed strong emphasis on sense perception. The failure of the

English romantics was not because of their interest in sensory details so much as in their failure to describe nature as tr u ly p erceiv ed . W inters' comment on Words worth should serve to illustrate. He writes: "Wordsworth, the poet of nature, popularized nature but almost never saw it; his descriptions are almost always stereotypes"

(FOD, p. 255). In contrast, the French romantics —

Mallarme, Rimbaud, and Verlaine— saw nature with clarity but isolated sensory detail from meaning. it is the post-

Symbolist poets who, falling heir to the emphasis on natural detail, took perception the rest of the way to instill meaning in natural objects while never losing sight of the objects themselves.

The technique of Edgar Bowers, typical of the post-

Symbolists, is illustrated in his poem "Dark Earth and

Summer," which is developed by controlled association.

Occasionally the post-Symbolists combine their particular kind of imagery with what Winters calls the rational 178 structure typified by such great Renaissance stylists as

Ben Jonson and Gascoigne. One of Bower's greatest poems,

"The Astronomers at Mont Blanc, " w ill serve as an exam ple.

Who are you there that, from your icy tower, Explore the colder distances, the far Escape of your whole universe to night; That watch the moon's blue craters, shadowy crust. And blunted mountains mildly drift and glare, Ballooned in ghostly earnest on your sight; Who are you, and what hope persuades your trust?

It is your hope that you will know the end And compass of our ignorant restraint There in lost time, where what was done is done Forever as a havoc overhead. Ageing, you search to master in the faint P e r s is te n t fortune which you gaze upon The perfect order trusted to the dead.

Bowers employs a simple question and answer structure in the poem, but the style is not to be confused with what

Winters calls the plain style. Bowers' use of post-

Symbolist imagery is intense. Discussing the image of the moon in the poem, W inters w r ite s: "in the th ir d line we have the appalling vision of the expanding universe disappearing into infinite space, and then the vision of absolute death in the image of the moon. The moon is the real basilisk; not the basilisk of archaic myth but the b a s i l i s k o f the modern te le sc o p e or space photograph; it is the basilisk in itself, cut off from everything pertaining to the warm variety of risk. It is the absolute vision" (p. 285). One cannot miss the 179 intellectual quality of the image combined with the moon as a thing-in-itself.

How do the post-Symbolists stand as moralists?

If anything, they prove conclusively what has already been pointed out jn Chapter One, that Winters' view of moralism is not narrow and restricted but centered on true perception and evaluation of experience. One has only to point once again to Wallace Stevens' hedonism or to Edgar

Bowers' Calvinist temperament without Calvinist conviction to see that Winters allows the poet a wide range. Each of the poets that he places in the post-Symbolist group has sincerity and conviction combined with skill in the technical aspects of style. Each invests the world with meaning although the meaning for each is peculiar to him.

Winters, however much he admires the post-Symbo lists, retains in addition his admiration for the plain style as epitomized by Jonson and Herbert. In the poetry of J. V. Cunningham he sees this style reborn.

J . V. Cunningham

In a short pamphlet entitled "The Poetry of J. V. 1 4 Cunningham" Winters declares Cunningham a m aster-stylist, one o f the great modern p o e ts. in the work o f Cunningham,

14Yvor Winters, "The Poetry of J. V. Cunningham, Swallow pamphlets, No. 11 (Denver: Alan Swallow, 1961). 180

says Winters, we have a return to the plain style of

Jonson with important additions. Like Jonson's it is free

of ornament and has little sensory detail. But, Winters

adds, it is far more complex and sophisticated perhaps

because the age in which Cunningham wrote was more complex,

more sophisticated than Jonson's age. Winters explains:

"Jonson's character was a Christian character, a character

which I think is no longer possible for an intelligent man.

Cunningham's spiritual situation is much more difficult,

and by that measure his achievement has been more difficult"

(P* 14).

Winters sees no relationship between Cunningham's

style and the post-Symbolist technique discussed previous

ly. He remarks; "This mode of writing is remote from

Cunningham's mode of writing" (p. 11). The basic ingre dients of Cunningham's style, according to Winters, can be briefly stated as follows: first, it is "essentially unmannered" (p. 14). T herefore, i t has a u n iv ersa l quality which cannot be victimized by time. Second, the

language is both precise and succinct so that each word

fulfills its maximum potentiality. Third, it is devoid of sentimentality, tending to be epigrammatic in tone,

intellectual in content. Winters, in summarizing Cunning ham's style, writes: ". . .h e draws abstractions from the experience and discards the experience itself"(p. 5). 181

Winters explains Cunningham's deliberate avoidance of

sensory detail (in his mature style) by labeling him,

like Robinson and Moore, a counter-romantic, but dis

agrees with Cunningham's assertion that inclusion of

sensory detail in a poet's work is tantamount to romantic

indulgence. Winters argues: "we live in a physical

universe, and we have senses as well as rational facul

ties, and the physical universe affects the lives and

understanding of most of us profoundly"(p. 3).

For the purpose of discussion, Winters divides

Cunningham's work into two periods; the early period, which includes the poetry written between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine, and the later work, following that period. While Winters obviously feels that Cunningham's

later work is tighter, harder, and freer of some of the f a u lt s o f h is e a r lie r p eriod , he n o n eth eless adds: "There are . . . certain surprising facts with regard to the ea rly work. Even the poems to which I have o b jected are in many ways distinguished in diction, rhythm, and structure; they are better than most of the poetry which has been published in the last thirty years or in any other comparable period"(p. 7).

Winters' criticism of the earlier poetry is more concerned with philosophical than stylistic problems in

Cunningham's work. For example, on "Agnosco veteris 182

V e stig ia Flammae" he w r ite s: "The poem is b e a u tifu lly written, and it would be moving if one could imagine the experience. But what we have here is a kind of mysticism of absolute passivity (which would be unconscious), of retreat to the womb. The mysticism in question has no religious sanction, and its only philosophical sanction is a handful of assertions by Cunningham. " (p. 4)

Winters suggests that the real problem of this par ticular poem is that it is one of Cunningham's few ventures into romanticism or anti-intellectualism. in still another early poem, "Unromantic Love," Cunningham has succeeded in doing a fine job stylistically, but Winters finds the meaning of the poem almost totally obscure.

Occasionally one finds Winters disturbed by Cunning ham's methods in his early poetry. For example, in "Reason and Nature" Winters feels that Cunningham has violated his own tenets of extracting meaning from experience by resting the entire poem on sensory detail. in this poem, says

Winters, Cunningham has employed a stereotyped image, that of the pool as mirror, in such a romantic way, that the argument becomes secondary to the image. He points out:

"The pool . . . is the occasion for the sermon, the argu ment, and the argument is a ll but crowded out of the poem by the pool. The argument could have been handled more effectively in Cunningham's more characteristic method" 183

(P. 6).

In spite of the objections to facets of Cunning ham's early poetry, Winters maintains that his style is sup erior to that o f most modern poets and th at i t im proved greatly, that it "hardened into what is perhaps the most remarkable style of our time" in his later poems

(p. 7). One of his later poems, "Meditations on Statis tical Method," is a good example of Cunningham's achieve ment .

Plato, despair! We prove by norms How numbers bear Empiric forms,

How random wrong Will average right If time be long And error slight.

But in our hearts Hyperbole Curves and departs To infinity.

Error is boundless, Nor hope nor doubt, Though both be groundless, Will average out.

In this poem Cunningham uses statistical theory, contrast ing ancient and modern views, as the vehicle for commentary on human passion. Because the poem is witty, stylistically excellent, and, in addition, because it is concerned with the understanding of human experience, Winters declares it great. Writing of another of the great poems, "For a 184

College Yearbook#" Winters praises Cunningham's style# averring that while the ornate style of such poets as

Sidney and Spenser has long been obsolete# Cunningham's plain style makes him a universal poet.

Thus we have come full circle from the techniques that Winters declares have ruined such poets as Eliot and

Hopkins, through the greater technique of the group

Winters calls the post-Symbolists# who combined the roman tic ideas of sensory perception with a form tending toward the classical# to finally arrive at the style for which

Winters has unqualified admiration— the plain style, a style closely associated with the classical tradition.

In analyzing Winters' criticism as applied to ly r ic p o etry , the c a r e fu l reader i s drawn to c e r ta in inevitable conclusions: first, that Winters demands a soundness of philosophy, a sureness of technique of the lyric poet; second, that he applies these criteria to poets and poetry with a great deal of logic and consis tency; finally, that Winters uses his moralism not to maintain a dogmatic position but to establish a norm from which he can evaluate the quality# the strengths and weaknesses of deviations. Winters never vacillates.

Using the critical procedures outlined at the beginning of the chapter, he explains, evaluates, and draws conclusions about poets or poetry based firmly on his conviction that 185

poetry can and does have a powerful impact upon the reader. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his judg ments on individual poets and poems, one recognizes the

logic of his arguments and the moral strength of his convictions. CHAPTER IV

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES*

A TISSUE OF IRRELEVANCES

For reciting the rather protracted fairy tale which is to follow and with which, I am sure, the reader is al ready as familiar as I am, I beg his indulgence.

Once there was an emperor who took great pride in his clothes. in truth he was so preoccupied with his appearance that he had little time to be concerned with the kingdom so that he left most of his affairs of state to some rather bumbling, inefficient ministers. His reputation for being a fashion-plate was known far and wide and so, inevitably, it reached the ears of two swindlers. Now these swindlers came up with a rather novel idea to take advantage of the emperor's vanity and become rich in the process. Together they journeyed to the royal palace where they represented themselves as tailors with magical abilities, able to weave cloth so elegant, so exquisite, and so fine that only a wise man could see it.

Hearing o f th ese two from various members o f the cou rt, the emperor sent for them and shortly thereafter ordered them to weave for him some magical cloth so that he might be elegantly attired in the next great royal procession.

186 L87

The tailors naturally agreed, and a room in the royal

palace was set up with their looms and other equipment.

The swindlers were clever and one could hear the

looms working night and day as they pretended to work on

the magic cloth. In the meantime their meals, sumptuous repasts, were set before them, and everything they asked

for they received. Presently the emperor began to wonder about the progress they were making and sent for two of his chief ministers. These he directed to go to the tailors and see if the material they were weaving was truly as splendid as they had promised.

The f i r s t m in ister went to the weaving room and was astonished and horrified to realize that he saw nothing. It never once occurred to him thatthere might be nothing to see. He began immediately to rationalize that fabrics of this sort (non-existent) were really all the vogue and, yet, in order to keep his position he realized that he must be able to describe the material to the emperor. Being a minister, he was very good with words and was able to return to the monarch with glowing reports about the gossamer beauty, the exquisite detail that was to go into the emperor's new clothes. indeed, he said, the fabric was so beautiful and so intricate that one had to be a very wise man (like himself, no doubt) to understand the delicate work. 188

The second minister was a much older man with

rather poor eyesight, and although he too could not see

the fabric (for truly there was none to see), he con

vinced himself that his eyes were playing tricks on him.

So, like the first minister he returned to the emperor with a glowing report. But unlike the first minister he

described not the entire fabric but the beauty of a single

th read .

In time the tailors went to the emperor and

measured him for the beautiful robes they were supposed

to be weaving. It was now time for the emperor himself

to see the material so the tailors led him to the weaving

room where they pretended to lay out before him, with great confidence, the fabric which they had supposedly woven. The emperor was aghast. He could see nothing.

But what could he do? To admit that the fabric was in visible was to admit that he was a fool, so, like the ministers who had preceded him he praised, perhaps a bit extravagantly, the beauty of the weavers' art. The swindlers were delighted, and returning to the room, they pretended to sew the garments for the emperor.

Now the emperor held royal processions for the pur pose of showing off his beautiful clothes several times a year, and the people always crowded the parade route to catch a glimpse of their monarch. The news of the magical cloth had circulated through the empire, and each and every citizen, believing in the wisdom not only of the emperor and his ministers but also of himself, determined to be on hand to admire the emperor's new clothes.

The day of the parade finally arrived and the tailors, reporting to the emperor's chamber, went through an elaborate pantomime as they pretended to dress the monarch for the parade. Finally, the emperor began the long, slow parade through the city streets. As he passed, each citizen, horrified by his inability to see the robes

(tangible proof to each of his own stupidity), did exactly what the ministers had done. Each turned to his neighbor praising the beauty of the garments, the intricacy of detail, the elegance, the color. It seems, however, that there was a child who was also standing along the parade route, waiting to view his emperor. As the emperor passed the little boy, who had always been taught to tell the truth, gasped and then shouted for all to hear: "The emperor is not wearing any clothes! The emperor is naked!

Suddenly the people took up the shout, and that is how the emperor, shivering along the parade route, finally dis covered he had been swindled. Unfortunately, by this time the tailors had escaped. But, really, that was not too important, after all, for the emperor had learned a valuable lesson, and, it is said, though I do not know 190 whether it is true, that he abandoned his interest in ornamental robes and began afresh to take an interest in the affairs of the empire.

Now if the reader w ill indulge me for just a

little longer, I believe I can show him how my story has direct bearing on modern poetry and literary criticism.

For the sake of argument, we shall call the emperor poetry.

The two tailors are modern poets who use obscurantist styles (no wonder one cannot see the fabric) but who none theless have convinced others (perhaps because they assume the bardic pose) that if one does not see the "fabric" or understand the meaning of the poem, he is dull-witted.

In walk the k in g 's m in is te r s, c e r ta in modern lite r a r y critics. They too are subject to being thought unwise or unintelligent if they fail to see the intricacies, the details— that is, if they fail to understand and justly praise the work of the tailor-poets. Now these critics f a l l roughly in to two groups. Some, lik e the f i r s t minister, attempt to justify themselves and the poets.

That is, they explain that obscurantism is the only technique by which the modern poet can exp ress the form le s s n e s s , the m eaninglessness o f modern l i f e . The second group, like the half-blind minister, choose to discuss the poem in terms of a particular piece of material, perhaps a single thread. What we have from them is not the poem 191

as written by the poet, but the poem as rewritten through

interpretation by the critic. In both cases, what we do

not have is a fin is h e d poem, a robe f i t fo r an emperor.

As for the child on the street — he reminds us of Yvor

Winters, who, while anything but a child, has never learned

to discard fundamental truth, who sees through the shams

and pretenses and demands that if the emperor is to parade

through the s t r e e t s , he must be c lo th e d in robes th at a l l

can see. paraphrasable content and true feeling motivated by experience are the fundamental threads with which one weaves a garment fit for an emperor.

Although this chapter w ill be primarily concerned with the two ministers (for in preceding chapters we have attempted to deal with the emperor and the tailors), a b r ie f comment or two by way of summary would seem in ord er.

The Emperor and the Tailors

As we have seen, the emperor's penchant for fashion causes him to completely ignore the affairs of state. In relating this to modern poetry, it is evident that when the total object of poetry is conceived to be aesthetic, then poetry loses greatly in the process. it loses meaning, value, its place as one of the most valuable sources of deep emotional insight into the human experience.

Thus the emperor, in disregarding the affairs of state 192

(meaning and value in poetry) removes the tenor and be

comes the vehicle.

As for the invisible robes, they certainly have

no function. They neither keep the emperor warm nor do

they preserve his dignity. By assuming that the only

purpose of the emperor's robes is ornamentation, the

ministers and the tailors have negated any possibility

of meaning. The tailors would convince us that the robes

are there, that, in other words, beneath the obscurantism

o f modern poetry l i e s a beauty that on ly the w ise can

p e r c e iv e . Thus we have poems lik e E lio t 's The Waste Land

which requires monumental footnotes and an extremely

creative critic to provide it with a semblance of meaning.

In a series of lectures given at Louisiana State University

in the spring of 1968, Cleanth Brooks observed that the

modern poet, unlike his predecessors, places the burden

on the reader. The question remains — is that where the burden truly belongs? Thus we find the tailors refusing

the obligation to weave a cloth that all can see, adorning

the emperor in obscurantism, and insisting that he is dressed in the very apex of good taste. The problem is,

if the sole value of the robes is in their ability to provide aesthetic satisfaction, have the tailor-poets achieved this purpose? Perhaps the best answer can be

found in Winter's assessment of Yeats. How can any art 193 dependent upon the use of language rob language of half its force by stripping it of denotative meaning and then lay claim to the beauty of a vehicle all but devoid of tenor? Part of the beauty of language is surely in its translation into imagery, but imagery is far more aesthe tically satisfying when it contributes to an awareness of the world, of the meaning of experience than it is when treated as an isolated object of admiration. Are we to take these poets on faith? Well, the emperor obviously did not. He sent for his ministers.

The Ministers

When the ministers went to see the fabric and dis covered there was nothing to see, they obviously feared to return with the news. Their solutions to the problem were similar in that each reported to the emperor that he could see and indeed appreciate the beauty of the fabric, b u t, n e v e r th e le ss , they follow ed two separate modes o f response. The first minister, realizing that the material was in truth invisible (at least to him), became an apolo gist for invisible material. The second, as we have noted, having poor eyesight, decided that although his vision was hazy, he probably could describe it for the monarch. These two alternate modes of response, which ultimately arrive at the same conclusion, the perception of invisible material, 194 can be termed the apologist attitude and the fragmentist attitude. Minister One typifies the former; Minister

Two, the latter.

Now the first minister, needing to rationalize his failure to see the fabric concluded that weaving techniques being what they were, the only kind of material one could possibly weave in his day and time was so gossamer as to appear invisible. Thus he found the weaving art determined by environmental conditions and became an apologist for invisible fabrics. Following in his footsteps are such critics as T. S. Eliot, John Crowe

Ransom, Donald Davidson, R. P. Blackmur, and A llen Tate among o th e r s .

Now I do not wish to claim that any of these critics are insincere, but by examining their works, it is not difficult to show that, like the first minister, they are determinists, relativists, romantics, and apologists for eccentric poetry, in xn Defense of Reason Winters describes Eliot's position as one of "unmitigated deter minism "(p. 487). Eliot, taking the position that a writer is the product of his environment, writes: "At the moment when one writes, one is what one is, and the damage of a lifetime, and of having been born into an unsettled society, cannot be repaired at the moment of composition."^

^T. S. Eliot, After Strange Gods (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1934), p. 26. 195

Ransom takes a similar position in The World's Body,

stating: "I suggest that critics and philosophers fix their most loving attention upon certain natural com pounds in human experience. But I say so diffidently, and not too hopefully. it will take a long time to change the philosophical set which has come over the practice of the poets. The intellectual climate in which 2 they live will have to be altered first."

Similarly, Louis D. Rubin, writing an introduction to 1111 Take My Stand in which the Southern Agrarians, including Tate, Davidson, and Ransom, express their literary, social, religious, and political views, affirms the determinist doctrine when he concludes; "One of the things 1111 Take My Stand tells us is that human nature never changes very much, and that whatever we do and wherever we live, we had better accept the fact that it 3 doesn't." in his essay "Mirror for Artists," included in the book, Davidson applies the determinist philosophy to art, remarking: "Unpredictable though the great artist may be, no study of the past can fail to reveal that social conditions to a large extent direct the temper and

2 John Crowe Ransom, The W orld1s Body (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1938), p. 62.

3Twelve Southerners, 1 111 Take My Stand (New York: Harper and Row, 1930), p. xviii. 196 4 form of art." Davidson takes the position that since

social conditions are responsible for artistic form, if

we seek improvement in art we must first change society.

Like the other apologists, he refuses to consider the

possibility that the great writer can transcend contem

porary conditions. Thus, says Davidson, if the arts are

to be restored to their "old places" they must ally them

selves with agrarian restoration. This stance results in

a mass of contradictions, for Davidson, while conceiving

art as shaping life, takes the position that art is

itself determined by its philosophical environment.

The result is a vicious circle.

R. S. Crane suggests the reason for this deter

ministic attitude may be the compulsion of the "new 5 critics" to justify poetry in a scientific age. Ob

viously, if one is going to justify eccentricity and

obscurantism in poetry, the first step is to blame it on

factors which cannot be controlled by the artist.

It is not surprising to find the apologist critics

also taking a relativist position. How can there be last

ing values in a determinist universe, a universe which

sees man as the product of outward circumstances, economic

^Ibid., p. 42.

C R, S. Crane, Critics and Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 105. 198 it has no meaning at all. That is what Mr. I. A. Richards' early theory comes to at last, and it is the first assumption of criticism today. But poetry is at once more modest and, in the great poets more profound, it is the art of apprehending and concentrating our experi- 7 ence in the mysterious limitations of form." Obviously, to a relativist, with the meaning of experience changing from day to day, all poetry can hope to do in the way of meaning is to catch experience at a specific moment in time, apprehend it, and let it go on its way. To evaluate and understand it is to affirm the existence of eternal and absolute values.

John Crowe Ransom, like Tate, distrusts the word meaning, in an essay titled "Why Critics Don't Go Mad," he exalts the critic for being the model of modern man.

Poets can go mad, says Ransom, because they are involved g in such things as epiphanies and "levels of meaning."

To the modern c r i t i c , on the oth er hand, such terms are absolutes and therefore irrelevant. Ransom explains:

The ancient religious establishments may seem to have thought they found their solid ground too easily; it is as if religion took it for granted that it had achieved its form and station once and forever, yet still there had to come a "modern" time when ev ery th in g was c a lle d in to question and religion had to start all over again

7 Ibid., p. xv.

8The quotation marks are Ransom's. 199

at the speculative level .... But at any rate the critic in his own speculations is going to have many a moment asking himself if he sees what he thinks he sees, and means what he says he means, and if this is really the life for him.

One gets the notion from reading Ransom that he finds the

idea of meaning embarrassing. He takes his relativistic

doctrine even further when in God Without Thunder he

describes Christ, long a symbol of absolute perfection and

goodness, as "the spirit of the scientific and ethical

secularism of the west."^

Even R. P. Blackmur, who on occasion designates

himself as a moralist critic, is obliged to put quotation

marks around meaning. In an essay e n t it le d "Notes on E.

E. Cumming's Language," he writes: "It should be con

fessed that for all those persons who regard poetry only as a medium of communication, these remarks are quite vitiated. What is communicated had best remain as abstract as possible, dealing with the concrete as typical only; then 'meaning' w ill be found to reside most clearly in the realm of ideas, and everything w ill be given as of 11 equal import." of Blackmur Winters comments in The

g John Crowe Ransom, Poems and Essays (New York: Random House, 1955), pp. 146-47.

^ Joh n Crowe Ransom, God Without Thunder (New York; Harcourt, Brace,and Co., 1930), p. 320.

■^R. P. Blackmur, Form and value in Modern Poetry (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1957), p. 295, f.n. 200

Function of Criticism; "Blackmur appears to be unwilling

to commit himself to any principles, but feels that all

principles should be used as methods of exploration . . . .

He appears to be a relativist, and a relativist in criti

cism is of little help to anyone save himself . . (p.

17).

I do not wish to belabor the manner in which the

apologist critics use the term meaning but for other

examples the reader is invited to read R. S. Crane and 12 Clean th Brooks.

Some of the apologist critics prefer to express

their relativism more directly. In After Strange Gods

Eliot writes: . . tradition is not a matter of feeling

alone. Nor can we safely, without very critical examina

tion, dig ourselves in stubbornly to a few dogmatic

notions, for what is a healthy belief at one time may,

unless it is one of the few fundamental things, be a 13 pernicious prejudice in another." Fourteen pages later

he affirms this position, writing: "It is fatally easy,

under the c o n d itio n s o f the modern w orld, for a w riter

to conceive of himself as a Messiah, other writers indeed

may have had profound insights before him; but we readily

^See Crane, pp. 20-21 and Cleanth Brooks, The We11-Wrought Urn (London: Dennis Dobson, 1947), pp. 161, 164, 168. 13 Eliot, p. 19. 201

believe that everything is relative to its period of

society, and that these insights have now lost their

validity; a new generation is a new world, so there is

always a chance if not of delivering a wholly new gospel, 14 of delivering one as good as new."

As the apologists cast out meaning andvalue in

poetry, they take up the banner for romanticism, defend

ing the excesses to which it inevitably leads. They are

the ultimate defenders of the non-rationa1, the formless,

the eccentric.

Some six years after declaring himself a classi

cist in "For Lancelot Andrewes" we find T. S. Eliot avow

ing that there is really very little difference between rom anticism and c la s s ic is m ("The concepts o f rom antic and classic are both more limited in scope and less definite

in meaning. Accordingly they do not carry with them the

implication of absolute value which those who have de- 15 fended one against the other would give them") , insisting that the discrepancy between his prose and poetry is un avoidable ("I should say that in one's prose reflexions one may be legitimately occupied with ideals, whereas in L6 the writing of verse one can only deal with actuality")

14I b i d . f p. 33

15I b i d . , p. 30

16I b id ., p. 28 202

and defending eccentricity ("In many instances it is

possible that an indulgence of eccentricities is the 17 condition of the man's saying anything at all").

In similar fashion we find Ransom declaring

reason the sole province of science. "Science gratifies

a rational or practical impulse and exhibits the maximum

of perception. Art gratifies perceptual impulse and 18 exhibits the minimum of reason." Taking Kant as his 19 literary "mentor" and extolling the virtues of the

Romantics (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, and

Keats), he becomes a principal defender of obscurantism.

In The VforId 1s Body he w r ite s:

A poet is said to be distinguishable in terms of his style, it is a comprehensive word, and probably means: the general charac ter of his irrelevances, or tissues. All his technical devices contribute to it, elaborating or individualizing the universal, the core object; likewise all his material detail. For each poem even, ideally, there is distinguish able a logical object or universal, but at the same time a tissue of irrelevances from which it does not really emerge.

Ransom's argument, carried to its logical conclusion advo

cates all but eliminating the tenor since the vehicle, which is obviously more important, is composed of a tissue

17Ibid., p. 32. 18 Ransom, The W orld's Body, p. 130. I Q "Ransom, Poems and E ssa y s, p. 159.

2^Ransom, The W orld's Body, p. 348. 2 0 3 of irrelevances which neither support nor explain the core of meaning.

Louise Cowan, d isc u s sin g Ransom's c r i t i c a l th eory, cites a 1924 article he wrote for The Fugitive, "The

Future o f Poetry," in which he s ta t e s : "For no a r t and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with other faculties." Cowan summarizes the rest of Ransom's article as follows: "in poetry specifi c a lly , . . . the modern mind scorned the adm ission in to a poem of the 'certain amount of nonsense' (archaisms, inversions, illegal accents) needed to provide the necessary latitude for the construction of form. The result of this enforced rigidity among poets was, he believed, a kind of paralysis; they were immobilized in the knowledge of their own inability to perform 21 flawlessly." in other words, the necessary latitude for the poet is in the 'nonsense' which translates as — if one cannot produce a robe fit for the emperor, let him put together a tissue of irrelevances. At least the emperor w ill believe he is clothed.

Donald Davidson, a fellow agrarian, finds in romanticism and obscurantism the only key to modern poetry.

^ L o u is e Cowan, The F u g itiv e Group (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959), pp. 142-43. His essay, "A Mirror for Artists," supports the romantic nostalgia for the past, advocating that the only way art can resume a position of favor is for a return to pre industrial times. He asserts: "Mr. Babbitt and Mr. More, and other critics of the Humanist school have dragged the weaknesses of Romantic art into the light, but seemingly fail to realize that if there is to be any art at all under the co n d itio n s o f modern l i f e , i t must probably be

Romantic art, and must have the weaknesses of Romantic art, with such excellences as may be allowed to the un- 22 victorious." Defending obscurantist poetry, he writes:

"The lonely artist appears, who sings for a narrower and ever diminishing audience; or having in effect no audience, he sings for himself. He develops not only a peculiar set of ideas, more and more personal to himself, but a personal style that in time becomes the 'unique' style demanded of 23 modern p o e ts, h ig h ly id io m a tic, perhaps ob scure." Thus

Davidson explains how romanticism and obscurantism go hand in hand. Romanticism is personified in the alienated artist, who retreats from a world he finds insupportable.

The more he regresses into this alienation, the smaller his circle becomes, the more obscure his style, until one

22 Twelve Southerners, 1111 Take My Stand, pp. 4 1 -4 2 . 23 Ibid., p. 44. 205 day he discovers he has an audience of one. A person who behaved t h is way on a s o c io lo g ic a l le v e l would be con sidered at best a neurotic. If Davidson's answer were the only one, we could only despair with him. But not all critics see the future of the artist as a neurotic descent into the self. Some, like Winters, do believe it is p o ssib le fo r great a rt to e x is t in modern tim es. They see the a r t i s t as growing outward in the manner o f

Cunningham and the post-Symbolists rather than turning inward upon himself.

Though variou s c r i t i c s g iv e d iffe r e n t names to their apologies for obscurantism, the basic tenet is usually poorly concealed. William Van O'Connor, rather than discuss a "tissue of irrelevances, " chooses to state that the poet is frequently unconscious of what he includes in his poetry. "Much of what the poet says is accidental and unwitting on his part." Thus O'Connor would not hold the poet responsible for what appears to be a kind of Yeatsian automatic writing. Furthermore, like

Ransom, O'Connor discounts the intellectual in metaphoric language. He writes; "Another objection to Winters' system is that it assumes capacity to intellectualize our experi ence of color, sound, rhythm, weight, texture, size, and so forth that is far beyond human capacity or 206 inclination." 24 In so writing, O'Connor negates the very technique so skillfully employed by the group Winters calls post-Symbolists.

R. P. Blackmur is another ardent supporter of romanticism and obscurantism. To Blackmur, as to Minister

One, the least important quality of a poem is its sin cerity. In Form and yalue in Modern Poetry he describes

Yeats, an acknowledged romantic and obscurantist as

"the greatest poet in English since the seventeenth 25 century," while at the same time admitting "as a poet he was left in the dubious position of being unable to believe in his own system more than half the time; he was constantly coming on things which his system could not explain, and which he was compelled to turn into 26 poetry." Blackmur defends the romantic position ex plaining later in the book that sincerity is a "personal 27 attitude, irrelevant to the poetry considered." Black mur himself is totally inconsistent when in the same book he w r ite s o f Pound: "For Mr. Pound is at h is b est a maker of great verse rather than a great poet. When you look

24 William Van O'Connor, An Age of Criticism (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 195%), pp. 105-06.

2^Blackmur, p. 75.

26Ibid., p. 72.

27Ibid., p. 295. 207

into him, deeply as you can, you w ill not find any extra

ordinary revelation of life nor any bottomless fund of 28 feeling." If one is to take Blackmur seriously in his

pronouncement that the principal attribute of a great

poet is to be found in his "extraordinary revelation of

life" and his "bottomless fund of feeling," then how can one explain his assessment of Yeats, a poet who he obviously feels is insincere, as the greatest poet in

English in the last three hundred years? The answer can be found in relativism, in situational ethics. The criteria applied to one poet obviously has little force or significance when criticizing the work of another.

When the emperor heard the description of the fabric from Minister one, he must have been elated, for as we have already noted, he loved beautiful and orna mental clothes. Yet, he must not have been totally con vinced of the accuracy of this report, for if he had he would not have sent the second minister on the very same errand. The second minister, as we have seen, had a problem with his eyes. His vision, in fact, was so obscured that he frequently could perceive only a very small part of any given object. Thus when he went to the weaving room and failed to see the fabric, he imagined that he actually could see it, at least partially. Some

28Ibid., p. 80. 208

critics who also have limited vision are i. A. Richards,

Kenneth Burke and Cleanth Brooks. They are the frag-

mentists. Unlike the apologist critics they do not

excuse obscurantism and romanticism; they simply ignore

them. Because their vision is limited, they over

compensate by writing about a single aspect of the poetry

they criticize. When other critics write of their criti

cal theories they usually use terms like "limited" and

"reduced" to describe them. Usually critics emulating

Minister Two find a convenient peg on which to hang

their critical doctrine and then, choosing poetry that

fits the category or isolating bits and pieces of a

selected poem from its finished form,they describe a

sleeve, a collar, or some particular part of the robe, thinking that they have seen the entire fabric.

One such critic is I. A. Richards, who finds in applied science a convenient way of perceiving the emperor's clothes. R. P. Blackmur suggests that Richards' work is so broad in psychologic theory and so limited in

literary criticism that the title literary critic is in 29 his case a misnomer. R. S. Crane attributes Richards' success in winning support for his theories to his scientism, adding;

In an age of faith in biology, he has contrived to frame the problems of literature, with rare consistency, in terms of primordial organic

29Ibid., p. 355. 209

processes; in an age convinced beyond any in the past that the key to all philosophic mysteries, and to most of our practical difficulties as well, is to be found in the study of words, he has effected a remarkable renovation of the liberal arts by substituting for their traditional distinctions and devices a universal theory of signs.

Though few disparage Richards' work, most bona fide critics of literature agree that it is severely limited by his scientific approach. A good illustration of the method by which Richards approaches poetry can be found in Principles of Literary Criticism. using an elaborate diagram, he elucidates the effect on a person reading a poem as follows:

The eye is depicted as reading a succession of printed words. As a result there follows a stream of reaction in which six distinct kinds of events may be distinguished. I. The visual sensations of the printed words. II. Images very closely associated with these sensations. III. Images relatively free. IV. References to "thinkings of, " various t h in g s . V. Emotions. VI. Affective volitional attitudes.31

What follows is a lengthy analysis of each step. Allen

Tate, commenting on Richards' method observes; "... here is what poetry would be if we could only reduce it to the same laboratory technique that we use in psychology

3(^Crane, p. 35.

31_I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Braced and WorlT7 1925), pp. 117-18. 210

.... Mr. Richards like a good positivist was the victim of a deep-seated compulsive analogy, an elusive but all- engrossing assumption that all experience can be reduced to what is actually the very limited frame of reference supplied by a doctrine of correlation, or of the rele vance of stimulus to response .... This doctrine was not empiricism: it came out of the demi-religion of positivism. The poetry has been absorbed into a pseudo- scientific jargon, no more 'relevant' to poetry than the 32 poetic pseudo-statement was relevant to the world."

Thus like the second minister, Richards' vision is obscured. To see poetry through Richards' eye is to limit one's perception of the literary work. As R. S.

Crane explains: "For the Richardsian interpreter of discourse there can be only one problem; and whether that problem is stated generally as the interaction of contexts and settings or is specified as ambiguity or metaphor or confusion of statement and definition, it is clearly one which can be adequately posed and solved in terms of isolated statements considered apart from the total artistic or logical structure of the works in which .. ,.33 they appear."

Another critic who embodies the limited perception

■*^Tate, pp. 42-43.

33Crane, p. 42. 211

of Minister Two is Kenneth Eurke. Charles I. Glicksberg

in American Literary Criticism 1900-1950 identifies Burke

as a literary heir of I. A. Richards' explaining: ". . . his primary object is to achieve terminological exacti

tude by reducing meanings, which are essentially social

in origin and purpose, to their component elements."

Summarizing Burke's criticism , Glicksberg notes the same

problem operating in Burke as in Richards.

His concern with literature is incidental rather than primary. The writer, the poem, the novel, the play, is but an illustration of a tendency, a semantic strategy for encompassing a situation, psychology, Marxism, Freudianism, semantics, metaphysics, anthropology, linguistics, symbolic logic, instrumentalism, sociology, all these are brought to bear on the study of literature, with the not unexpected result that the literary work often gets lost or obscured in the process.34

A case in point is Burke's discussion of Hamlet in Counter-

Statement in the section entitled "Applications of Ter

minology." One finds Burke simply using the play to define such varianc ideas as the difference between

objective and subjective writing ("the objective writer attempts to make effective Symbols; the subjective writer attempts to make Symbols effective") and the difference between the dramatist and the essayist ("in this play

Shakespeare shows a tendency toward the least dramatic of

■^Charles I. Glicksberg, American Literary Criti- cism 1900-1950 (New York: Hendricks House, 1951), pp. 307-09. 212 35 all ways of thinking, the 'essayistic.*") From these

definitions, Burke goes into a comparison of the advan

tages and disadvantages of the two modes. The play is

immediately discarded for it has served its purpose --

the clarification of terminology, a favorite concern of

Burke.

Earlier in the book Burke, discussing Hamlet in

an essay entitled "Psychology and Form," briefly mentions

the appearance of the ghost in Act I, scene iv, in order

to illustrate the relationship between psychology and

form, and again, using the work only as a point of

departure, launches into a variety of concerns, most of

them extra-literary: the problem of a spiritual adjust

ment in a scientific age, overproduction and unemployment,

the cultural mediocrity of the nouveaux-riches, the pro pensity of art to substitute the psychology of the hero

for the psychology of the audience, and finally the definition of three terms (form, psychology, and elo- 36 quence). If one goes to Kenneth Burke to learn something about Hamlet he w ill be disappointed. Of Burke's Shakes pearean criticism, Blackmur writes: "His common illus trations of the pervasive spread of symbolic pattern are drawn from Shakespeare and from the type of the popular

3 5 Kenneth Burke, Counter-Statement (Los Altos, C a lifo r n ia : Hermes P u b lic a tio n s, 1931), p. 196.

36Ibid., pp. 29-44. 213

or pulp press. I think that on the whole his method could be applied with equal fruitfulness either to Shakespeare,

Dashiell Hammetr or Marie Corelli . . . Blackmur con

tinues: "The real harvest that we barn from Mr. Burke's writings is his presentation of the types of ways the

mind works in the w ritten word. He is more in te r e ste d in

the psychological means of the meaning, and how it might

mean (and often really does) something else, than in the 37 meaning itself." Burke shares with Minister Two the problem of a vision limited to a single thread of the

fabric combined with an interest in various threads that are not associated with the emperor's new clothes, in his hands literature turns to economic, social, and psychological concerns, and to this extent he reduces the literary work to a relatively minor status.

The third and last of the fragmentist critics is

Cleanth Brooks, Unlike Burke, Brooks never strays from the work, and, in fact, is inclined to close textual readings. His problem is that like Minister Two his vision is fragmented; that is, he often limits his criti cism of poetry to a search for irony and paradox. Poems that exhibit these qualities are good; poems that do not are not good. R. S. Crane in his essay, "The Critical

Monism of Cleanth Brooks, " congratulates the critic for his

37Blackmur, p. 361. 214 structural interest in the poem but adds: "I do not question . . . that 'irony' in Brooke's sense of the term, is a constant trait of all good poems, and I should have no quarrel with him had he been content to say so and to offer his analysis of texts as illustra tions of one point, among others, in poetic theory. What troubles me is that, for Brooks, there are no other points. 1,38

Brooks states his theory succinctly in The Well-

Wrought Urn. In the very first sentence of the book he declares: "Few of us are prepared to accept the state ment that the language of poetry is the language of paradox." The remainder of the book is Brook's defense of this belief. He begins with Wordsworth's sonnet, "It is a beauteous evening." Although one might be inclined to see the poem as straightforward and even simple,

Brooks declares that as in Wordsworth's other poetry, the simplicity is deceptive. Consider his explanation:

The poet is filled with worship, but the girl beside him is not worshipping. The implication is that she should respond to the holy times, and become like the evening itself, nunlike; but she seems less worshipful than inanimate nature i t s e l f .... The underlying paradox (of which the enthusiastic reader may well be unconscious) is nevertheless thoroughly necessary, even for that reader. Why does the innocent girl worship

38Crane, p. 84. 3Q Brooks, p. 1. 215

more deeply than the self-conscious poet who walks beside her? Because she is filled with an unconscious sympathy for all of natugg, not merely the grandiose and solemn ....

Discussing the individual words of the poem he notes a number of instances illustrating Wordsworth's use of paradox, to continue:

. . . consider the adjectives in the first lines of Wordsworth's evening sonnet: beau teous , calm, free, holy, quiet, breath less. The juxtapositions are hardly startling; and yet notice this: the evening is like a nun breathless with adoration. The adjective 'breathless' suggests tremendous excitement; and yet the evening is not only quiet but calm. There is no final contradiction, to be sure; it is that kind of calm and that kind of excitement, and the two states may well occur together. But the poet has no one term .... He must work by co n tr a d ic tio n and qualification. •*■

Because of such analysis, Crane sees Brooks prin cipally as a grammarian. He adds: "His whole effort can be described not unfairly as an attempt to erect a theory of poetry by extending and analogizing from the simple proposition of grammar that the meaning of one word or group of words is modified by its juxtaposition in dis- 42 course with another word or group of words."

Although there is validity in Brooks's approach, the obvious problem l i e s in i t s e x c lu s iv e n e s s . Even Ransom,

4^Ibid., pp. 1-2.

41Ibid., p. 6.

4^Crane, p. 93. 216

who states his unqualified admiration for Brooks, finds

his approach limited, expressing the wish that Brooks

would also concern himself with such aspects of poetry 43 as form and meter. Glicksberg feels that Brooks's

enthusiasm for irony and paradox frequently causes him

to find them where no one else possibly could. He

writes: "Before we know it the critic has composed a

gloss which is practically a revised edition of the

poem, far more ingenious and complex than the innocent

original.1,44

Because Brooks's vision is so restricted, he takes

a dim view of critics who concern themselves with aspects

he considers outside of the poem itself. Oddly enough

structure and form fall into this category. In his

essay, "The Heresy of Paraphrase," he attacks Winters

for asserting that a poem should have rational meaning.

In fact, Brooks directly assigns most of the problems of

criticism to what he refers to as "the heresy of para phrase." He declares: "To refer the structure of the poem to what is finally a paraphrase of the poem is to

refer it to something outside the poem." Furthermore, he adds, to concern one's self with such external problems

is to make poetry competitive with science, theology, or

43 Ransom, Poems and E ssa y s, p. 157.

44Glicksberg, p. 516. 217 philosophy."45 It is interesting, if not puzzling, to find Brooks accusing Winters of limiting his criticism to on ly those poems which have r a tio n a l meaning when he is so inclined himself to limit his own critical choices to poems in which he finds irony and paradox. Like the second minister, Brooks, observing a single thread, believes he sees the entire fabric.

The two ministers obviously were very convincing, so convincing, in fact, that when the emperor went to see his robes he must have really been certain of his own stupidity. But if one cannot trust his own ministers, whom can he trust? So, attired in absolutely nothing, the emperor went on parade.

The Truth-Teller

What must the ministers have thought, what must they have f e l t , when th e ir f o ll y was exposed? What must their reaction have been to the little boy, the truthteller, this absolutist renegade in an age of ethical relativism? Obviously, they would have had to support the statements made to the emperor. They probably turned to one another and almost jointly declared: "The boy is wrong." They could have supported this belief by assert ing that the truth-teller was the only one who failed to

45Brooks, p. 164. 218 see the fabric. What better proof of his stupidity! To continue our analogy, why has Winters been the object of so many attacks by the critics? To find the answer, one can analyze the attack of Stanley Edgar Hyman in The

Armed Vision, a typical specimen of anti-Winters criti c i s m .^

Disregarding the tone of the essay (thinly veiled sarcasm) we see that Hyman's principal objections to

Winters are as follows:

1. That he follows in the tradition of such "ignoble" critics as Samuel Johnson (who "reached heights of dogmatic statement that even Winters has never equalled"), Matthew Arnold, and several other critics for whose work Hyman has equal disdain.

2. That he is inclined to disregard the hier archy of poets as established by tradition and place poets such as "a man named Frederick Goddard Tuckerman," who have not incurred the blessing of a long line of distinguished critics, in his own list of fine poets.

3. That his critical opinions have undergone alteration from his earlier essays to the later, more mature, books.

4. That the tone of Winters' criticism is both passionate and dogmatic.

5. That Winters maintains a moralist point of view .

For a more detailed analysis of anti-Winters criticism see Whitney Mundt, "Yvor Winters and His Critics," Thesis Louisiana State University, 1961. 219

6. That he (Hyman) and Winters agree on certain critical evaluations (Poe and Melville) but disagree on others (Emerson and James),47

How valid is Hyman's criticism of Winters? That Winters

is a product of the moralist tradition, which is directly

in the mainstream of English letters, is indisputable, and

he would probably be the last to deny his debt to Johnson

and Arnold, among others. However, as we have seen,

Winters' moralist position is neither narrow nor didactic.

As for Winters' opinions differing from those of other

critics, what have they to fear? Differences of opinion

between critics are valuable, even desirable. No poet,

no writer should be placed on so high a pedestal that a

critic should fear to take him down for closer examina

tion. Neither should a critic disparage the possibility

that some great writers who have much to add to American

letters (or English letters) have been overlooked. Herman

Melville went through some thirty years of obscurity;

Donne was h eld in d isrep u te fo r two hundred years;

Edward Taylor is a recent discovery. Are we to ignore

the possibility that there are others? Part of the

obligation of the critic is to bring unknown talent to

public attention.

Hyman's article is a combination of vituperation

47S tan ley Edgar Hyman, The Armed v is io n (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), pp. 49-72. 220

and misunderstanding. He does not understand what

Winters means by such terms as moralism and obscurantism.

Winters' use of moralism has been the principal topic of

Chapter one. in brief, Winters sees the great poem as a

triumphant blending of motive and emotion in which form,

diction, and meter contribute to the expression of a true

and just evaluation of experience. The poem is moral when

these ingredients are present regardless of whether the

evaluation is Calvinist or hedonist, Christian or pagan.

This is hardly the attitude of a dogmatist. Furthermore, what Winters dislikes about obscurantism, the deliberate obscuring, concealing, or rejection of meaning, is that it

leads directly away from evaluation.

What is really at the heart of Hyman's dislike for

Winters is his tone, his Johnsonian impatience with critics who deny a poem the validity of meaning. In this criti cism Hyman is right. Winters has the irascibility of the truthteller, impatient with those who he feels denigrate reason, deny values, and apologize for the decadent

strains in a medium whose greatest writers have always been the upholders of moral values.

Getting back to our story of the emperor, it is hoped that upon discovering that he has been swindled, that in truth the robes he wears are invisible to all, he w i l l return to the affairs of state thereby giving our story a happy ending, and one would also hope that he w ill, the future, encourage all to be seekers of truth. ABBREVIATIONS

FOC The Function of Criticism

FOD Forms o f D iscovery

IDOR In Defense of Reason

222 LIST OP WORKS CONSULTED

Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp. New York: W. W. Norton, Inc., 1958.

Alkon, Paul. Samuel Johnson and Mora 1 D iscipline. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1957.

Aquinas, Thomas. The Summa Theoloqica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Great Books o f the western W orld. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Vol. 19 and 20 in 54 vol. Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1955.

Arnold, Matthew. "The Study of Poetry. " Essays in Criticism, 2nd series. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1879.

Babbitt, Irving. Rousseau and Romanticism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919.

Blackmur, R. P. Form and Value in Modern p o e tr y . New York: Doubleday and Co., 1957.

Brooks, Cleanth. The 'Well-Wrought Urn. London: Dennis Dobson, 194-77

Burke, Kenneth. Counter-Statement. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1932.

Cowan, L ouise. The F u g itiv e Group. Baton Rouge? Louisiana State University Press, 1959.

Crane, R. S. Critics and Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.

Donagon, Alan. "The Scholastic Theory of Moral Law in the Modern World." Aquinas, A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Anthony Kenny. New York: Doubleday and Co., 1969.

Eliot, T. S. After Strange Gods. New York: Harcourt Brace, and Co., 1933.

Fraser, John. "Yvor Winters: The perils of Mind." Cen tennial Review, 14, No. 4 (Fall, 1970), 396-420.

2 2 3 224

Fussell, Paul. Samuel Johnson; The Life of Writing. New York: Harcourt Brace jovanovich, 1971.

Gilson/ Etienne. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Trans. L. K. Shook. New York: Random House, 1956.

Glicksberg, Charles I. American Literary Criticism 1900 to 1950. New York: Hendricks House, 1951.

Harrison, James A. "The Poetic Principle." The Complete Works o f Edgar A llan Poe. 14 in 17 v o l. New York: Thomas Y Crowell and C o., n. d.

Hyman, S tan ley Edgar. The Armed V is io n . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948.

Johnson, Samuel. Lives of the English Poets. Vol. 1 in 3 vol. Ed. George Birbeck Hill. Oxford: Claren don P ress, 1905.

______. Rasselas, Poems, and Selected Prose. Ed. Bertrand H. Bronson. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1958.

Jowett, Benjamin, trans. "Phaedras." The Dialogues of Plato in Great Books of the Western World. Ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins. Vol. 7 in 54 vol. Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1955.

"The Republic." The Dialogues of Plato in Great Books of the western World. Ed. Robert Maynard HutchTns. Vol. 7 in 54 v o l. Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1955.

McKean, K eith. The Mora 1 Measure o f L ite r a tu r e . Denver: Alan Swallow, 1961.

More, Paul Elmer. Shelburne Essays. 6th and 7th series. New York: George P. Putnam's Sons, 1910.

Mundt, Whitney. Yvor Winters and His C ritics. Thesis, Louisiana State University, 1961.

O'Connor, William Van. An Age of Criticism. Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952.

Ransom, John Crowe. God Without Thunder. New York: Har court Brace and~Co., 1930. 225

Poems and Essays. New York: Random House, 1955.

_ . The World 1s Body. New York: Charles Scrib ners Sons, 1938.

Stanford, Donald E. "Classicism and the Modern Poet," Southern Review, New Series 5, No. 2 (Spring, 1969), 475-500.

Tate, Allen. On the Limits of Poetry. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1948.

Twelve Southerners. 1111 Take My Stand. New York: Harper and Row, 1930.

Warren, Austin. "Paul Elmer More; A Critic in Search of Wisdom," Southern Review, New Series, 5, No. 4 (October 1969), 1091-1111.

Winters, Yvor. Edwin Arlington Robinson. 1st ed. 1946; rpt. Norfolk: New Directions, 1971.

Forms of Discovery. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1967.

In Defense of Reason. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1947.

______. "Poetry, Morality, and criticism." The Critique of Humanism. Ed. Hartley C. Grattan. New York: Brewer and Warren, Inc., 1930.

______. The Function of Criticism. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1957.

______. "The Poetry of J. V. Cunningham. " Swallow Pamphlets, No. 11. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1961.

______. "The Poetry of W. B. Yeats." Swa1low Pamph lets , No. 10. Denver: Alan Swallow, 1960. VITA

The author, born in Chicago/ Illinois/ graduated from McAllen High School, McAllen, Texas, in 1951. She received her B.S. degree from The University of Texas in

1955 and her M.A. from University of Houston in 1966.

She is presently working on her Ph.D. at Louisiana State

University in Baton Rouge.

She has thirteen years of teaching experience and is currently on the faculty of Louisiana State

University.

Candidate is a widow with one daughter, Dana, to whom this dissertation is dedicated.

226 EXAMINATION AND THESIS REPORT

Candidate: Shirley Fraser

Major Field: English

Title of Thesis: Yvor Winters: The Critic as Moralist

Approved:

Major Professor andAZhairman

Dean of the Graduate School

EXAMINING COMMITTEE:

Date of Examination:

April 7Ar 1973