35
CHAPTER II
John Crowe Ransom's first volume of poetry Poems About
God was first published in 1919. Between 1922 and 1925 not
just most of his best poetry was written but he also helped edit the Fugitive magazine. Between 1939 and 1959 he held
the post of Editor to the Kenyon Review.
The New Criticism published in 1941 has been Ransom's most renowned contribution to literary criticism that contains articles like "All Verse is Not Poetry": "Eliot and the Metaphysicals" and "Wanted an Ontological Critic".
In 1955, Poems and Essays was published. This highly revered Man of Letters greatly influenced another Man of
Letters - Allen Tate, (his student at Vanderbilt).
According to Ransom the critic, irony was the ultimate mode of great minds as it presupposes the others : "It implies
first of all an honorable strenuous period of romantic creation; it implies then a rejection of the romantic forms
and formulas: but this rejection is so unwilling, and in
its statements there lingers so much of the music and
colour and romantic mystery which is perhaps the absolute poetry, and this statement is attended by such a disarming
rueful comic sense of the poet's own betrayal, that the
fruit of it is wisdom and not bitterness, poetry and not
prose, health and not suicide"-^^ Irony to Ransom was the 36 rarest of the states of mind, because it is the most inclusive. The whole mind has to be active in arriving at it— both creation and criticism, poetry and science.
Ransom's poems reflect these comments very well.
Poetry to Ransom was an Art rather than Science and hence more preferable. The reference of science is fixed and ideal and the reference of poetry is always free and personal. In short, a poem means many things.
In his famous essay "Poetry: A Note In Ontology" Ransom has classified poetry into i) Physical Poetry ii) Platonic
Poetry and iii) Metaphysical Poetry. Physical Poetry deals with things or objects—things in their thinginess. Platonic poetry deals with ideas and their elaboration. But
Metaphysical Poetry is "the most original and exciting, and intellectually perhaps the most seasoned, that we know in our literature, and very probably it has few equivalents in other literatures"^, Ransom has thrown special light on the miraculism in Metaphysical poetry. Further in the essay
Ransom compares the literary qualities of the nineteenth century poetry to those of the seventeenth century to state:"Clearly the seventeenth century had the courage of its metaphors, and imposed them imperially on the nearest things, and just as dearly the nineteenth century lacked this courage, and was half-heartedly metaphorical, or 37 content with similies".'^ Thus Ransom has remarked on the use of conceit that constitutes both originality and miraculism in Metaphysical Poetry. According to him, the correct technique of the conceit required a basis of verisimilitude to the miracle, Ransom has stated, "Specifically the miraculism arises when the poet discovers by analogy an identity between objects which is partial,..., and proceeds to an identification which is complete."* He clarifies this position by comparing the conceit to a simile which says
'as if or 'like' and keeps the identification of objects partial.
And why do poets resort to miraculism? Ransom's reason is "Platonic Poetry is too idealistic, but Physical Poetry is too realistic, and realism is tedious and does not maintain interest. The poets therefore introduce the psychological device of the miracle."^ Miraculism initiates attention as it leaves one looking, marveling and reveling in the thick thingy substance that has just received its strange representation. It suggests that the object is perceptually remarkable, and the reader had better attend to it.
In another well-known essay "Wanted: An Ontological
Critic" Ransom has brought out the difference between scientific discourse and aesthetic discourse. According to 38 him, the validity of a scientific discourse depends in part on its semantical purity as each symbol should refer to a specifically defined object: the reference of a single symbol is limited and uniform. Whereas in aesthetic discourse symbols are replaced with icons, and an icon peculiarly refers to the whole or concrete object and cannot be limited: "The icons here are in the mind, they are the mental images evoked. The technical use of language by the poet is one that lifts words out of their symbolic or definitive uses into imaginative or image—provoking uses. "^
Thomas Daniel Young has commented in his article
"Ransom's Critical Theories: Structure and Texture" that
"For Ransom the poem remains the great paradox, a. construct looking two ways, with logic trying to dominate the metaphors and metaphors trying to dominate the logic.
And to this contrary twosome he adds meter to give the poem the form of a Trinitarian existence and to make its creation dependent upon a tenuous compromise between metre and sense, image and idea, metaphor and argument. From this combination of heterogeneous qualities comes almost the only defense man has against the encroachments of science and technology, for poetry is one of the few means through which man can reconstitute the qualitative particularity or 39
experience". Simply defined, poem is an organism in action—
the head representing logical structure, the heart
representing local texture and the feet representing the
meter. Though each organ plays its separate part, it must
reconcile its difference with the other two in order to
^from]a harmonious whole.
In one of his letters written to Allen Tate (5
Sept.1926), Ransom has brought out three moments in the
historical order of experience. While explaining the third
moment he has stated that it is by images that the poet
goes back to the first moment. Therefore when the poet
makes images he is regressive, trying to reconstitute an
experience which he once had. For this reconstitution the
images come out much mixed with concepts: "What we really
get, therefore by this deliberate recourse to images, is a
mixed world composed of both images and concepts; or a sort
of practicable reconciliation of the two worlds".^
In another letter written on 20"^*^ Feb. 1927, Ransom has
warned "If you have no dear concepts, to which you have
given everything in your time, your images are children's
images and without meaning and substance".^
According to Ransom, the business of a literacy critic
was exclusively with an esthetic criticism. The business of
the moralist would be something else. He disposed of 40 various critical approaches he considered fallacious psychological, humanist, and Marxist. He recommended that ultimately the critic would have to subscribe to an ontology. In other words, he denounced the abstraction that is often associated with philosophical thinking and always demanded concreteness and specificity in Poetry. Therefore for him the true richness of a poem was to be found in its local texture of language and metaphor — not in the intended fable and theme, the logical structure or argument. "77i <^ G
Ransom argued for the primacy of the concrete element - the image, not the idea; the metaphor (and conceit) , not the concept; the myth, not the dogma. But there must be conjunction of the physical object and the Platonic idea.
Otherwise one gets the pure poetry of things-imagism-or the abstract poetry of ideas — allegory. In bringing together the natural object and the unattached idea the poet uses the greatest weapon in his arsenal-analogy-and if he brings it to bear properly, he forges Metaphysical poetry, thus balancing idea against fact.
Ransom was less interested in the poet's choice of material than he was in the poet's actual performance. The poet's intention counted little for him; what mattered was the document which resulted from the poet's labour. How the 41 poet controls the energy of his language which provides the vehicle by which he can enclose and reveal experience was of prime importance. The language has got to be submitted to the restraining element of metre and the life-giving dimension of metaphor. Through the mechanical discipline of the metre and the miraculous play of the metaphor the poet performs his craft and makes his poems.
Ransom has demonstrated time and again how important the technical dimensions of poetry are. The significance of the experience makes up the poet's fable. So plot and argument is pure structure' that is balanced by metre which is 'pure technique'; and somewhere in between lies the power of the language in idiomatic and syntactic forms modified by trope — that is the texture of the poem, But the interrelation of these three parts is subtle and complex. As far as texture (i/j concerned. Ransom continuously insisted upon the concrete particularity of the world's body or the living details of nature. However, he did not present an organic theory of poetry but wanted to present an analysis of the finished product.
Ransom was against the poetry of feeling as it expresses the personality of the poet, his subjectivism,
sentimentality, and self—indulgence. He stressed cognition and therefore for him the best poetry is Metaphysical. But 42 whereas it was the poetry of experience to Allen Tate, it was the poetry of knowledge to Ransom. To him emotion did make up a part of the compound but it was not and should not be dominant. He emphasized the uniqueness of poetry separating it from philosophy. He sharply attacked the poetry of ideas and in that light what he meant by
Metaphysical poetry as a poetry of knowledge would be clearly intelligible.
In his essay "New Poets And Old Muses" Ransom comments, "The new poet today looks back upon a half century which may have been more eventful for new poetry than any other in the history of our language, with the exception of the second half of the 16th century, and possibly its successor the first half of the 17th century."-"^^ Then he refers to Ezra Pound's advice to the poets to *Make It New' as a result of which the poets founded many innovations and engineered many revolutions.
All possible poetries were being tried and as it was difficult to tell which one the main groups were going to follow, it was a state of great confusion. The capability of a poem and what its limits are, came to light steadily.
Ransom maintains. But the farther we stand from the peak of all that confusion, the more possible it seems that there is still going to be a continuity between the old poetry 43 and the poetry of the future. And perhaps the reason would be that the genius of the art will refuse to go very far from the genius of the language, which is its mediiim; and that the possibilities of the medium were rather thoroughly explored by the able pioneers of 1550 to 1650, and other companies of pioneers who came after them and found new discoveries always harder to make".''"''^
Ransom's "courage of metaphors" and the "concrete particularity of the world's body" from which he draws them reflects best in his poem "The Equilibrists" .''^^
The theme of the poem is, what love, passion, or heart demands, honour, morality, or the head denies. Sensuous fulfillment of love is prevented by the dictates of conventional principle of chastity and the consequence is the torture of equilibrium — the ruin or doom of lovers.
But their ruin is not only perilous but also beautiful as the lovers maintain perfect distance in spite of their mutual bondage.
The first six stanzas present the predicament elaborated by the help of unification and juxtaposition of paradoxical, heterogeneous elements together:
Full of her long white arms and milky skin
He had a thousand times remembered sin 44
Alone in the press of people travelled he
Minding her jacinth, and myrrh, and ivory.
Mouth he remembered : the quaint, orifice
From which came heat that flamed upon the kiss.
Till cold words came down spiral from his head.
Grey doves from the officious tower illsped.
Body: it was a white field ready for love,
On her body's field, with the gaunt tower above.
The lilies grew beseeching him to take.
If he would pluck and wear them, bruise and break.
Eyes talking: Never mind the cruel words.
Embrace my flowers, but not embrace the swords.
But what they said, the doves came straightway flying
And unsaid; Honor, Honor, they came crying.
Importunate her doves. Too pure too wise.
Clambering on his shoulder, saying. Arise,
Leave me now, and never let us meet
Eternal distance now command thy feet. 45
Predicament indeed, which thus discovers
Honor among thieves, Honor between lovers.
O such a little word is Honor, they feel.
But the grey word is between them cold as steel.(p65)
In the first stanza, we see that the lonely lover has only the passionate memories of the beloved and the sin they both did not really commit. White arms and milky skin imply purity and sensuous love. The mouth in the second stanza, remembered as an opening, represents the heart, as heat or passion comes out of it in the form of a flame.
Then the body of the beloved is seen in the third stanza as a field ready for love where lilies grow and f appeal the |
Lover to love sensuously. In the fifth stanza, the eyes of the beloved also express the urge that the flowers of Love may be embraced by her lover. All these symbols represent the heart, passion or sensual Love.
On the other hand -- cold words and grey doves in the second stanza, represent the thoughts of honour. The words become cruel words arid swords in the fourth stanza. The cruel words become doves again in the fifth stanza; now they are importunate and too wise. AndjC\ the words become one word-*Honor' in the sixth stanza. Here the word 'Honor' is like the sword - cold as steel. These symbols represent the head, thoughts of 'Honor' itself, Moreover the head is 46
seen as the officious tower and a gaunt tower in stanzas
third and fourth.
The symbols illustrate Ransom's ability to draw from
the concrete particularity of the world's body or from the
living details of nature. He presents the hviman body not
only as a field ready for Love but chiefly as a white field
and the colour 'white' represents something deeper — pure
sensuous love. Moreover, he projects mouth as an opening of
or the heat of passion that turns into a flame which again
represents the fire of physical passion.
What is more interesting or surprising is the way the
first set of symbols is juxtaposed and entwined with the
second set of symbols that represents the opposite principle— the world of thought governed by the head. For
instance, in the second stanza mouth serves as the opening
of the passion and turns passion into a flame only up to a
certain point, till cold words come down from the head.
Moreover, the thoughts coming out in the form of words are projected as grey doves. Dove is usually the symbol of
innocence but here because of 'grey' it becomes destructive
or of the militant kind. In the fifth stanza the doves
clamber on the Lover's shoulder and drive him off; they are
not only conscious but almost sinister.
Moreover, the head is projected as an officious tower 47 that governs the military of thoughts .which prevent the play of passion. Closely seen, the fusion of thoughts and words with doves and the world of militation, is a unification of heterogeneous or opposite elements - of innocence and destruction. Thus with a courage of metaphors
Ransom projects the conflict between the head and heart, or reason and emotion, putting images relating to both, opposite each other in the same stanza, to signify how the head denies what the heart desires.
Further, the words are made to look like swords as they threaten the lovers that fulfilment of love would be the destruction of honour. For this purpose Ransom has again juxtaposed the words that look like swords with flowers like lilies representing innocence -- growing beseeching the lover to take. The juxtaposition again illustrates the conflict between the apposite forces. And in the sixth stanza the single word * Honor' resembles the cruel swordlike words because the word * Honor' stands cold as steel between the lovers. Thus Ransom projects that the head, the thought and Honor are as cold or indifferent, and as cruel, preventive or destructive, as the sword.
Thus Ransom manages the opposition of reason and emotion by heterogeneous or paradoxical use of images.Stanzas seven and eight run: 48
At length I saw these lovers fully were come
Into their torture of equilibrium;
Dreadfully had foresworn each other, and yet
They were bound each to each, and they did not forget.
And rigid as two painful stars, and twirled
About the clustered night their prison world.
They burned with fierce love always to come near,
But honor beat them back and kept them clear.
(P 66)
In the seventh stanza, there are two more paradoxes — equilibrium generally means balance, peace or rest but here it is called a torture because the balance has prevented fulfilment for which the pair of lovers craves. And having dreadfully forsworn to each other on one hand, they are bound to each other on the other.
In the eighth stanza, the human lovers are called two rigid stars and it is a fusion of the human with an astronomical entity. In this conceit the humans, the stars, the night and the prison world are put together. The separation of the lovers has made the life of the lovers dark as a night or the prison world. Night — usually the time for freedom of Love—fulfilment is made to appear a place of arrest or forceful prevention of love, in an 49
ironical or paradoxical manner. Such is the torture of
equilibrium and therefore the speaker laments in the ninth
stanza :
Ah, the strict lovers, they are ruined now. (p 66)
Paradoxically again, having been strict by one standard
(chastity/honour) they are ruined by another. As what has happened is inevitable part of human condition, Ransom
asks:
Man, what would you have?
( P 66 )
And the two alternatives he presents are Heaven and hell.
The states of heaven and hell are elaborated in stanzas
eleven and twelve respectively. And again a dualism
emerges:
Heaven, the spirit and honour on one side; hell, the body,
and dishonour on the other.
In stanza thirteen the star conceit appears again:
But still I watched them spinning, orbited nice
There flames were not more radiant than their ice
I dug in the quiet earth and wrought their tomb
And made these lines to memorize their doom: 50
Epitaph
Equilibrists lie here; stranger tread light;
Close but untouching in each other's sight;
Mouldered the lips and ashy the tall skull.
Let them lie perilous and beautiful.
(P 67)
Here Ransom admires the beauty the lovers exhibit in their torture of equilibrium. The flames represent passion here and ice represents chastity. The lovers are projected as spinning and perfectly orbited stars whose chastity is as radiant as their former passion. The conceit unifies the human lovers, the astronomical entities — the stars, and contains the paradox in which flames and ice the opposites reflect a quality they seem to share the brilliance, beauty, or wonder of mutual equidistance.
However, because the pair is in a sense dead or as the poet envisions their doom, he writes the epitaph which contains two more paradoxes. The lovers lying in their graves are seen to be close but untouching and yet they manage to keep themselves in each other's sight. And they lie perilous and beautiful in their death. What Ransom implies here is that the only resolution to the lover's predicament is an aesthetic one.
According to Karl F. Knight, "They go into an 51 equilibrium; that is they are influenced by two forces which operate to place them in perilous balance between polarities, with no possibility of achieving either effective separation or physical passion, heaven or hell.
In heaven there is no passion, and in hell no honor. Though their epitaph describes them as beautiful as well as perilous, nonetheless, they are in death, still "Close, but untouching." The painful equilibrium continues".''"^ Ransom's two lovers stand for all lovers in this kind of predicament. Thus Ransom handles the opposition between heart and head by paradoxical use of archetypal images.
Ransom's 'Our Two Worthies' also contains the conceit.
The second stanza presents a fusion of ideas and images from strange fields like religion and medicine:
Jesus proclaimed the truth
Paul's missionary tooth
Shredded it fine, and made a paste.
No particle going to waste.
Kneaded it and caked it
And buttered it and baked it
(And indeed but all digested
While Jesus went to death and rested)
Into a marketable compound 52
Ready to lay on any wound,
Meet to prescribe to our distress
And feed unto our emptiness.
(P 55)
Thus the abstract truth from the world of theology is compared with a marketable compound from the world of medicine and the nature of the comparison is surprising.
The next stanza adds:
And this is how the Pure Idea
Became our perfect panacea,
Both external and internal
And supernal and infernal.
(P 55)
These lines project the conceit with more precision and the pure idea is projected in the form of panacea. That is not all, the panacea of truth is made applicable to both
external and internal ailments which refers to material dissatisfaction and spiritual emptiness. The conceit thus refers to the words of theology, medicine and metaphysics.
So far as logical framework is concerned 'The
Equilibrists' provides a fine example. The two lovers in
this poem are caught in a predicament. They love each other
passionately, but they are prevented from fulfilling their
love because of their commitment to honour. Honour is a 53 grey word cold as steel between them. The separation seems to be fatal as due to increasing unhappiness the strict lovers are ruined. It seems that they are dead and the poet comes to writing their epitaph. But their death or doom is not actual; it is their ruin as lovers. The poet, in anticipation, and because the lovers are in a spiritual sense dead, writes the epitaph. He compliments them in their ruin as 'perilous and beautiful'. The whole poem presents to the reader the nature of their ruin and the reasons for it.
Closely seen, the first six stanzas make a statement of the lover's memories and their elaboration. Especially the sixth stanza sets the premise by making the statement of the predicament of the pair of lovers that they are on the horns of a dilemma suggesting that the lovers who devote to both love and honour in their extremes at the same time have to flinch from their union. This implies the conflict between reason and emotion, the head and the heart.
Stanzas seven and eight project the situation of the
lovers as 'torture of equilibrium' - the torment of feeling both nearness and separation. The reason for such suffering
is the dictates of honour. The speaker states that the
state of the lovers is a ruin. 54
Stanzas nine and ten make a statement of two extremes or alternatives — heaven and hell.
Stanzas eleven and twelve elaborate the conditions in heaven and hell. The implication is that going to the extreme of honour may be honourable but there will be no pleasure and the extreme of passion will be great but it would lead one to the hell of dishonour due to infatuation for the mortal flesh.
Stanza thirteen and the epitaph lead to the conclusion or message on the basis of what has been stated and elaborated earlier. The conclusion is that going to either extreme will lead to the loss of the advantage in the other and that though honour seems to bring peril the balance between the two opposite forces love and honour, shall continue as it is worth appreciation as much as pure passion may be. The excess of passion will be hellish, dishonourable and sinful. And dedication to purity, chastity, morality may be heavenly or saintly, but an earthly and proportionate balance of both is more beautiful.
The conclusion implies Ransom's message namely, to balance thoughts and emotions. The dissociation of sensibility was a very serious theme for him as it was for
T.S. Eliot. Both of them appreciate the unification, 55 balance or equilibrium of reason and emotion.
The first stanza of 'Our Two worthies' sets the premiss of the argument that follows through the poem:
All the here and all the there
Ring with the praises of the pair:
Jesus the Paraclete
And Saint Paul the Exegete.
(P 55)
The next stanza elaborates the premises
Jesus proclaimed the truth
Paul's missionary tooth
Shredded it fine, and made a paste,
No particle going to waste.
Kneaded it and caked it
And buttered it and baked it
(And indeed but all digested
While Jesus went to death and rested)
Into a marketable compound
Ready to lay on any wound,
Meet to prescribe to our distress
And feed unto our emptiness.
(P 55)
The intention of this elaboration is to bring the reader to
a point of conviction that - 56
And this is how the Pure Idea
Became our perfect panacea,
Both external and internal
And supernal and infernal.
(P 55)
In the fifth stanza Ransom takes an account of Paul's achievement and reward in the first three lines:
This was the man who, given his cause.
Gave constitution and by-laws.
Distinguished pedagogue
Who invaded the synagogue
And in a little while
Was proselyting the Gentile
(P 55)
And then Ransom puts his question:
But what would there have been for Paul
If the Source had finished all ?
(P 56)
He argues this to lead the reader to conviction again that
Paul could not have done anything except for his captain
Jesus who spirited him to. Thus Ransom asserts Paul played the second fiddle to Jesus the supreme.
In another elaborate stanza Ransom highlights how
Jesus the captain knew his subordinate well and how to 57 extract the best that is there in the subordinate. The stanza elaborates how Paul was prepared for any type of punishment, had an irresistible urge to bare his back for divine chastisement that rats and jail were just negligible to him. And this elaboration leads onto another in the seventh stanza :
Paul was every inch of him
Valiant as the Seraphim
And all he went among
Confessed his marvellous tongue,
And Satan fearing the man's spell
Embittered smote the gates of Hell.
(P 56)
This stanza highlights how far Paul was courageous — that even Satan feared his tongue.The next couplet rounds the story off :
So he finished his fight
And he too went from sight.
(P 56)
The conclusion, drawn from all this account and elaborations, resounds with the premiss. Ransom urges the reader that taking what has gone before into account let no quarrelsome split in the church corrupt this argument. And he appeals to the readers to repeat : 58
Who then is Jesus?
He is our Paraclete
And Paul out of Tarsus?
He is our Exegete. (P 56)
Ransom's 'Dead Boy' strikes one because of its mixed variety of diction. For instance, the death of the boy is called foul subtraction, and a transaction. It is called the friendly waste of breath as well as a deep dynastic wound. Ransom projects the reality as seen from different points of view for which he uses such a variety of expressions. However, the poem surprises the reader more with the basic conceit which involves a wide range of associations. The boy is called a black cloud full of storms, a sword beneath his mother's heart, and also a pig with a pasty face. The fusion of the disparate becomes more complex as the dead boy is described as a green bough from
Virginia's aged tree, and also the old tree's late branch wrenched away. The image of the boy becomes as complex as a conceit.
Similarly in stanza three of 'Spectral Lovers' there is a mixture of words belonging to the field of artillery, the prison- world, history etc: , 59
Strong were the batteries of the April night
And the stealthy emanations of the field;
Should the walls of her prison undefended yield
And open her treasure to the first clamorous knight?
"This is the mad noon, and shall I surrender all?
If he but ask it I shall".
(p 6)
Here the words from the battlefield: batteries, emanations, prison, undefended, yield, knight, surrender have been used along with the words from the world of romance or love —
April night, stealthy, open her treasure, mad noon.And the lover in stanza five speaks:
"Am I reeling with the sap of April like a drunkard ?
Blessed is he that taketh this richest of cities;
But it is so stainless the sack were a thousand pities.
This is that marble fortress not to be conquered,
Lest its white peace in the black flame turn to tinder
And an unutterable cinder".
(P 7)
The beloved is called 'this richest of cities' and 'marble
fortress' and as she is so conscious, chaste or moral she is also termed 'so stainless the sack' and 'a thousand pities'. Thus Ransom draws his words, adjectives and phrases from the far—flung fields — history, architecture, 60 nature etc. and fuses the great with the commonplace or trivial like 'the sack'.
'Her Eyes' — one of the fine examples of Ransom's wit, begins by saying:
To a woman that I knew
Were eyes of an extravagant hue:
viz, china blue (P 43)
And immediately he says:
Those I wear upon my head
Are sometimes green and sometimes red,
I said. (P 43)
For the sake of compliment which is flattery. Ransom compares the eyes of the woman to his own. The statement in the second stanza reflects a disarming rueful comic sense.
The tone here is that of ironical self—mockery. The blue colour of the eyes of the woman represents innocence, playfulness and purity. Whereas the sometimes green colour of the poet's eyes represents peace, well being and youth on one hand and the sometimes red colour of his eyes represents evil, passion or anger on the other.
The third stanza runs:
My mother's eyes are wet and blear.
My little sister's are not clear.
Poor silly dear. (p 43) 61
Here Ransom presents two more comparisons to elaborate how the eyes of the woman he knew were really different to reach the assumption in the next stanza:
It must be given to but few,
A pair of eyes so utter blue
And new;
(P 43)
The assumption is made more convincing with the help of the comparisons made earlier. Now he wonders:
Where does she keep them from this glare
Of the monstrous sun and the wind's flare
Without any wear;
And were they never in the night
Poisoned by artificial light
Much too bright;
(P 43)
These two stanzas express the poet's concern over the well- being of the playful delicacy of the blue eyes of the woman, but they express it with the method of indirection.
Moreover the sun — the universal and eternal giver of warmth is seen as a glaring monster, just as the wind or air another source of life is also seen flaring. As compared to the innocence and playful delicacy of the blue eyes of the woman they are made to look so, by the poet. 62
Similarly, light is made to appear artificial in comparison with the original light of purity radiating from the blue eyes. Both these expressions contain the use of hyperbole.
The next stanza expresses yet another wonder:
And had the splendid beast no heart
That boiled with tears and baked with smart
The ocular part ?
(P 43)
Ransom pays one more compliment to the woman calling her a splendid beast. As the eyes of the woman are utterly bright and blue and playful, they are splendid. And as they seem to be ever unaffected the woman shows a tough character and therefore she is like a beast.
Till this point Ransom compliments the woman but the next two stanzas present surprising paradoxes to the earlier attitude of the poet:
I'll have no business with those eyes.
They are not kind, they are not wise.
They are two great lies. (p 43)
After having contemplated and spoken a lot about the blue eyes, the poet declares out of helplessness but from behind the mask of self-prudery that he has no business with those
eyes. Moreover, to call the ocular parts two great lies 63 also reflects wit.What the poet foresees in the end is:
A woman shooting such blue flame
I apprehend will get some blame
On her good name.
(P 43)
This last piece expresses the playfulness of wit. The poem
is a fine combination of surprise and delight. And it is
also stuffed with ironical levity, the base of which is
earnestness of admiration.
Ransom's "Armageddon' is a poem in which he treats a
religious subject in an ironical manner. The novelty of the
treatment of the conventional subject highlights Ransom's analytical mind-set which can make the reader contemplate and realize another aspect of the conventional belief. The poem shows Christ as a prude, and Antichrist to be generous
and courteous. Antichrist and his peers do not wish battle
and bloodshed. They even make songs of innocence. To ones
shock, it is Christ and his warriors who become thirsty to
draw the opponent's blood and they even sing of death. By
making Antichrist more attractive. Ransom throws a new
light on old belief, not to ridicule faith but to emphasize
that sympathy from anybody will be always charming.
In Ransom's "Blue Girls' the theme is the oldest one—
the carpe diem, however its treatment is novel. The poet 64 addresses the blue girls not as a lover who would incite them but as an older and knowledgeable person. Hence the use of pure and elegant diction and not of a merely affectionate language. From the diction of the poem itself the reader grasps that the poet addresses the blue girls as a disinterested and yet concerned observer:
Twirling your blue skirts, travelling the sword
Under the towers of your seminary,
Go listen to your teachers old and contrary,
Without believing a word.
Tie the white fillets chen about your hair
And think no more of what will come to pass
Than bluebirds that go walking on the grass
And chattering on the air. (P 29)
The first two stanzas set the admonishing, elderly and wise tone of the poem. The speaker advises the blue girls to listen to their teachers 'old and contrary', without believing a word. The use of adjectival phrase 'old and contrary' in relation to the noun 'teachers', and the use of 'without believing a word' in relation to the verb- phrase 'Go listen to', indicate that the speaker is knowledgeable and he is advising out of his worldly wisdom.
The third stanza runs: 65
Practice your beauty, blue girls, before it fail;
And I will cry with my loud lips and publish
Beauty which all our power should never establish
It is so frail. (P 29)
There is an echo of the carpe-diem theme here, the speaker tells the girls to practise their beauty before it fails and compliments them with assurance that the power of the poets to arrest and present beauty in words is inferior, as compared to the power of beauty. The use of verbs like
'practice', 'publish' and 'establish' here is characteristic of the meticulous, elegant and wise type of observer the speaker is. 'To publish' here implies to describe or to expose in a dignified manner. And to
'establish' here implies to demonstrate, to prove or even to set up. The compliment is elegant and delightful.
In the fourth stanza the speaker tells a story:
For I could tell a story which is true;
I know a Lady with a terrible tongue.
Blear eyes fallen from blue.
All her perfections tarnished - yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.
(P 29)
The true-story the speaker tells here is a warning to the girls — that beauty is soon degraded, as the elderly 66 speaker narrates here how soon the perfections of a
* lovelier' woman were tarnished and she became *a Lady with a terrible tongue'. The warning comes out of personal observation. Thus the theme of the poem is old and significant but the treatment is a novel one.
Ransom handles the challengingly familiar theme without making it commonplace or sentimental. The prosaic, colloquial diction that is natural to a man of cultivated sensibility and developed sensitivity, with a flair for words and a touch of cleverness, complements the theme as it prevents the poem from falling into sentimentality.
Therein lies the wit of Ransom.
* Ransom's 'Survey of Literature' written in rhyming couplets in a comic and satirical tone, is another replica of his wit, containing an admixture of levity and seriousness. The theme is serious — that the modern writers have to carry on their profession without or with scarcity of food the source of life. Moreover, both their writing and thinking take a lot of effort and yet both are superficial. Ransom begins by saying:
In all the good Greek of Plato
I lack my roastbeef and potato.
(p 63)
These lines set the rueful comic sense of the poem. Then 67 the poet goes on surveying how Aristotle was steady on the bottle, Chaucer swilling soup from his saucer, Shakespeare writing big on small beer, Wordsworth subsisting on 'curd's worth', Tennyson putting gravy on his venison. All this appears comic but it makes the poet contemplate and he writes in the seventh stanza:
What these men had to eat and drink
Is what we say and what we think.
(P 63)
These lines mean, in one sense, what the modern writers call writing and thinking was just bread and butter to those great writers. In another sense, the lines imply that the modern 'writers merely ruminate what has been swallowed, or well enjoyed by the great masters of the art.
And precisely, this concern is not as less serious as is appears to be. It echoes Dr. Johnson's opinion to the effect that whatever was to happen to man has already happened; nothing new remains to happen and therefore all that the modern writers can do is to imitate the ancients.
In the twelfth couplet Ransom prays:
God have mercy on the sinner
Who must write with no dinner.
(P 64)
These lines again highlight the rueful comic sense of self- 68 mockery. For writers, who have elected their profession of letters and have therefore to carry it on without solid food or real essence, there is even -
No gravy and no grub
No pewter and no pub.
(P 64)
And therefore it seems as if they have:
No belly and no bowels
Only consonants and vowels
(P 64)
Ransom seems to be suggesting that it is not that the modern writer cannot digest anything solid or of real essence, but the problem is that there is not much of real essence left to him. Most of the real essence has already been exhausted and therefore the modern writers sound hollow. Their words sound only as consonants and vowels and not as solid signs of meaning.
So though the treatment is hilarious, the poem has a more serious concern. The fusion of literary activity with appetite communicates the concern over the loss of essence to imply spiritual starvation.
To sum up, most of Ransom's critical ideas find their manifestation in his poetry. John M. Bradbury has commented, "Ransom's prose theories appear directly or 69 indirectly in the verse quite regularly, and certain poems are illuminated by a knowledge of his philosophical and critical ideas, It must be insisted, however, that none of
Ransom's successful poems is essentially an idea, "-^^
Irony which was the ultimate mode of great minds, because it presupposes all the other modes according to
Ransom, manifests itself consistently in his poetry. It gives his poetry the detachment of the onlooker or what
Eliot called objectivity or escape from personality. And it also provides his poetry a certain ambiguity out of unresolved balance, conflict between the opposites due to his concern for what Eliot called the dissociation of sensibility.
Ransom's metaphors show the courage of fusion of seemingly unlike elements which Eliot praised in his essays on the Metaphysicals and Andrew Marvell. His poetry is a mixed world composed of both images and concepts. There is reconciliation of these two as the structure tries to dominate the texture and the texture tries to dominate the structure.
The logical framework of his poems proves that he handles emotion without ever seeming sentimental. His argumentation is self—protective as he insists that he is as much thinking as he is feeling, and that he is only a 70 detached onlooker.
Ransom's diction is drawn from distinct fields — the world of nature, history, science, commerce, romance, medicine, astronomy put together with the simple variety of language. The speaker's knowledge, worldly wisdom, his stature, detachment and Ransom's vision - all these reflect
in his use of words, phrases or expressions.
And in Ransom's wit there is miraculism for which he praised Metaphysical poetry, he tackles not only the modern problem of dissociation of sensibility, or the conflict between head and heart but also handles challengingly age- old themes and yet he can surprise the reader. The use of persona, the detachment and irony of the persona, the use of precise diction, the miraculous fusion of the opposites and the knowledge that comes out is the cause of delight.
Moreover, whenever there is rueful comic sense of self- mockery there springs levity the base of which is serious.
Thus Ransom's poetry contains conceit, logical
framework, mixed diction, and wit which are the major
Metaphysical elements. How the same features reflect in
the poetry of his disciple Allen Tate, will be examined in
the 71
Notes and References
1. John Crowe Ransom, "Four Short pieces From The
Fugitive":Selected Essays of John Crowe Ransom
(ed.) Thomas Daniel Young and John Hindle, Baton Rouge
and London, Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1984. p 31
2. John Crowe Ransom, "Poetry : A Note in Ontology" :
Ibid. p 88.
3. Ibid. p 89.
4. Ibid. p 91.
5. Ibid. p 92.
6. John Crowe Ransom, "Wanted : An Ontological Critic":
Ibid, p 151.
7. Thomas Daniel Young, "Ransom's Critical Theories":
Structure and Texture" Mississippi Quarterly Vol.xxx
No.l
Winter 1976-77 p 85.
8. "Art As Adventure In Form : Letters of John Crowe
Ransom"
(ed.) Thomas Daniel Young and George Core,
Southern Review 12: 1976 p 792.
9. Ibid, p 795. 72
10. John Crowe Ransom, "New Poets and Old Muses":
Selected Essays Of John Crowe Ransom
(ed.)Thomas D. Young and John Hindie,
Baton Rouge & London, Louisiana State Univ. Press,
1984, p 319
11. Ibid.
12. John Crowe Ransom: Poems and Essays
New York, Vintage Books, 1955, pp 65-67
I have taken all the illustrations of Ransom's poetry
from the same book. Hereafter, the page numbers of
poems have been quoted in the body of the Chapter
itself.
13. Karl F. Knight, "Love as Symbol in the Poetry of
Ransom"
John Crowe Ransom: Critical Essays and Bibliography
(ed.) Thomas D. Young, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State
Univ. Press, 1968, p.185
14. John M. Bradbury, "Ransom As Poet"
Accent 1951: XI p.45