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MAN AND THE NATURAL CONDITION: SOME ASPECTS OF PRIMITIVISM IN THE POETRY OF ARCHIBALD MACLEISH Item Type text; Dissertation-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Maher, Mary Stiles, 1915- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 06/10/2021 19:47:48 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/290185 This dissertation has been 65-9853 microfilmed exactly as received MAHER, Mary Stiles, 1915- MAN AND THE NATURAL CONDITION: SOME ASPECTS OF PRIMITIVISM IN THE POETRY OF ARCHIBALD MacLEISH. University of Arizona, Ph. D., 1965 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan MAN AND THE NATURAL CONDITION: SOME ASPECTS OF PRIMITIVISM IN THE POETRY OF ARCHIBALD MacLEISH by 6 vy Mary S} Maher A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 19 6 5 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE I hereby recommend that this dissertation prepared under my direction by Mary S« Maher entitled MAN AND THE NATURAL CONDITION: SOME ASPECTS OF PRIMITIVISM IN THE POETRY OF ARCHIBALD MacLEISH be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy V April 196? Dissertaticm Director Date After inspection of the dissertation, the following members of the Final Examination Committee concur in its approval and recommend its acceptance:* 0^$ / d . Qp—1*A-P-M 3o, /H5 Ja i (y / /,-' /<• <• „ i/j iV; -/&• j 3jjj 3* 'fis *This approval and acceptance is contingent on the candidate's adequate performance and defense of this dissertation at the final oral examination* The inclusion of this sheet bound into the library copy of the dissertation is evidence of satisfactory performance at the final examination. STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allow able without special permission, provided that accurate ac knowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manu script in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author. SIGNED PREFACE The aim of this dissertation is to explore the poetry of Archibald MacLeish to determine his views on the relationship between man and nature; to disclose what this relationship may contain of good or value to man; to extract, since man's concept of "good" and "value" must necessarily derive from his temporal and cultural exist ence, such references to chronological and cultural primi- tivism as may have influenced the poetry; to include, inasmuch as "good" and "value" deal with the essence of man's being--body and soul--what uses he makes "of psycho logical primitivism," that is, what path man must pursue to achieve an inner good or value applicable to outer existence, irrespective of temporal or cultural criteria; and finally, to note the corresponding changes in prosody, imagery, persona and stance which accompanied MacLeish's various phases. Since the bulk of MacLeish's poetry is recognized as falling within three rather well-defined periods--the subjective, the prophetic, and the publie--it will be explored chronologically, beginning with Songs for a Summer's Day (1915) and ending with J.B. (1958). The exploration was not begun with the thought of disclosing any great truths about the condition of man in the universe. However, sharing the experience of con sidering the Whys and Wherefores of that condition with another human being, one who has the gift for articulating the experience, may at least throw some light on the com promises man must make in order to come to terms with the impenetrable mystery of existence. xxi.• * • ACKNOWLEDGMENT' The writer is deeply grateful for the encouragement of Dr. Barney Childs throughout this undertaking and for his helpful suggestions, advice, and criticism. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. PRIMITIVISM: A DELINEATION I II. THE STRUGGLE WITH SUBJECTIVITY: MAN IN NATURE 6 Songs for a Summer1 s Day 7 Tower of Ivory 7 The Happy Marriage and Other Poems ... 11 The Pot of Earth 16 Nobodaddy. 17 Streets in the Moon 22 The Hamlet of A. MacLeish 28 III. AN AFFIRMATION: MAN AS THE MEASURE OF THINGS 58 New Found Land 58 Conquistador 68 Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller1s City. 82 Elpenor. 90 IV. SOCIAL UNREST, WAR, AND THE LABOR OF ART: THE POET IN THE PUBLIC WORLD 106 Panic 107 Public Speech. 112 The Fall of the City 114 v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS--Continued CHAPTER PAGE Land of the Free 116 Air Raid 117 America Was Promises. 119 The American Story 125 V. AFTER THE WAR 139 Actf ive and Other Poems 139 The Trojan Horse 148 "New Poems, 1951-1952," included in Collected Poems, 1917-1952 149 This Mus ic Crept By Me Upon The Waters. 152 Songs for Eve 155 J.B 163 VI. CONCLUSIONS 180 BIBLIOGRAPHY 197 ABSTRACT The bulk of Archibald MacLeish's poetry falls into three fairly well-defined phases: the subjective, the pro phetic, and the public. In all three he is concerned, to a varying degree, with man's relationship to nature and how best that relationship may be interpreted with a view to attaining both physical and moral good. From Songs for a Summer1s Day (1915) through The Hamlet of A. MacLeish (1928), the poet's concern is mani fested in a predominantly subjective manner, so that a reader of these works does not forget for a moment that he is reading of the agonies and frustrations of youth as it contemplates the old, old mysteries of life and love and death. Only as his interest begins to turn outward, a move which becomes evident in New Found Land (1930), doss Mac Leish abandon introspection and consider the total natural condition as something to be accepted and, in fact, enjoyed, rather than something to be treated as a personal enemy. His poetry of the thirties has little of the disillusionment which had characterized that of the preceding decade. In fact, this poetry of the early thirties is a commitment to a belief in mankind as capable of achieving dignity and vii viii integrity and of living in harmony with nature. MacLeish expresses this view through praise of American soil and praise of primitive cultures and crafts, a view which is particularly apparent in Conquistador (1932) and Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller1s City (1933). In the late thirties, MacLeish's awakening concern for the rest of the world develops into an outright par ticipation in the criticism of the injustices perpetrated upon the helpless and innocent by the power of money and greed and one of the products of such power: war. Panic, The Fall of the City, and Air Raid are expressions of the poet's indictment of his age. However, his moral judgments upon his fellow men and his.warnings to them to mend their ways are accompanied by moments of encouragement and optimism. In the short poems of Public Speech and in the radio scripts of The American Story, he attempts to re- spark, especially in Americans, that pride in self-respect and dignity which had been theirs in the early days of settling and developing the continents. There is every where in the major work of the period the suggestion that man's only hope is to put aside corrupting sophistications and seek a simple life. Following World War II, MacLeish's themes gradually recede from concern with public affairs. They become, rather, a return to subjectivity, but a subjectivity through which the poetic experience is shared equally between poet and audience. For example, the moral judgment °f Actfive, made b^ the poet, is a judgment which can be universally shared: man is essentially a creature of dig nity and worth. Further, the hunger of the human soul responding to the mysteries of nature in This Music Crept BZ Me Upon The Waters is a need which is shared and under stood by the sensitive reader. And last, one of the oldest enigmas in common experience is the inexplicable suffering of the innocent--the theme of J.B. MacLeish's judgment is that the inner quality of man gives purpose to his exist ence, in whatever place or time. The various phases of MacLeish's poetry are inter preted through various forms of the poetic craft: sonnets, lyrics, blank verse, free verse, dramatic verse (using a distinctive accentual stress); but uniquely the phases are a record of the progressive development of an apocopated terza rima, which has become a trademark of MacLeish's craft. CHAPTER I PRIMITIVISM: A DELINEATION The term primitivism is generally accepted to mean that civilizations corrupt men and the more sophisticated the civilization, the more corrupt the man. The assumption is that the more natural--or "simple"-~his society, the more nearly can man live according to his natural goodness. Handbooks of literary terms usually recognize two divisions of the term. For example, in A Dictionary of Literary Terms these divisions are described as (i) chronological primitivism, which assumes that the earlier stages in the history of a people were better than the present stage (i.