73
CHAPTER III
Allen Tate came onto the literary scene in the mid-
1920s. Very early he discovered T.S.Eliot and his admiration for Eliot's work intensified. It was he who attracted his Teacher - John Crowe Ransom's attention towards the presence of Modernists on the literary scene.
Tate's work echoes Eliot's poetry and criticism. Yet Tate did not imitate; what he agreed and admired he took into his own substance and made it his own.
Tate and his contemporaries of the early 192 0s looked bacK at their country, the South, as a country with considerable historical consciousness with more feeling for tradition than existed anywhere else in the nation, There had been a civil war over a half—century before. And as the
South had been badly beaten, the southern leaders decided to follow the path of the conqueror. The leaders called for a new South of cities and factories. But the time and place could not make the Southern writers like Tate willing to ape the ways of the industrial East. Rather there was revulsion against the necessity of having to do so in order to live in such a time and place. As the South re—entered the world, with the war of 1914—1918 these writers glanced backward and then emerged a literature conscious of the past in the present. It is called the Southern Renascence. 74
Tate and his companions cried out against the
industrial, commercial civilization, the worship of getting
and spending and the degradation of religion and tradition.
It is remarkable that in such a situation Allen Tate had
the courage to commit himself to becoming a *Man of
Letters'.
In 1926, he and John Crowe Ransom planned to do
something about the Southern situation. They brought out a book entitled I'll Take My stand in which Tate, Ransom and
others professed the Agrarian way of life. The first paragraph of the introduction written by Ransom states,
"All the articles bear in the same sense upon the book's
title subject: all tend to support a Southern way of life
as against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which
to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase.
Agrarian versus Industrial".^
Louis D. Rubin, Jr., has clarified the Agrarian motive
in his article on Tate: "In an Agrarian community aesthetic
activity would not be secondary to Economics... Nature,
religion and art would be honored activities of daily life,
and not something superfluous and outmoded, to be indulged
when business permitted. Knowledge letters, learning,
taste, the integrated and rich fullness of emotion and 75 intellect - would be "carried to the heart", as Tate said in the 'Confederate Ode, ' and not an unassimilated, discordant conglomerate of fragments..."^
In the same essay Mr. Rubin, Jr., has also quoted
Allen Tate's Phi Beta Kappa address at the University of
Minnesota : "the man of letters must not be committed to the illiberal specializations that the nineteenth century has proliferated into the modern world : specializations in which means are divorced from ends, action from sensibility, matter from mind, society from the individuals religion from moral agency, love from lust, poetry from thought, communion from experience, and mankind in the community from men in the crowd. There is no end to this list of dissociations because there is no end, yet in sight, to the fragmenting of the western mind."^ These comments reflect the influence of T.S. Eliot's remarks on the dissociation of sensibility in the Twentieth Century.
War, rootlessness, godlessness, bestiality — the pestilences of modern man were the concern of poets like
Eliot and Tate; Eliot recommended the deliberate and disciplined cultivation of spiritual values through religion for the modern man. He staunchly believed that only through God can civilization survive. Tate and the
Southerners were saying the same through Agrarianism. The 76 role of religion in Agrarian life was stressed upon in the book 'I'll Take My stand'. T.S. Eliot expressed his sympathy with the South Agrarian Movement in his book
'After Strange Gods.'^
The demand for a conscious quest for the order and unity of a spiritual existence runs throughout Tate's poetry and criticism. Even his famous definition of Tension in poetry reflects the same philosophy: "the meaning of poetry is its 'tension', the full organized body of all the extention and intention that we can find in it. The remotest figurative significance that we can derive does not invalidate the extentions of the literal statement. Or we may begin with the literal statement and by stages develooej the complications of the metaphor:at every stage we may pause to state the meaning so far apprehended and at every stage the meaning will be coherent."^ ThiS| contains a stance against facile revolts from traditional forms of culture, illiberal specialization and the dissociation of sensibility.
Allen Tate's poetry can be termed as disciplined, intellectual and difficult poetry. He expected the fullest cooperation of his reader's all intellectual resources, all his knowledge of the world and all the persistence and alert/ness that the modern reader would think of giving to 77 scientific studies. Hence the concentrated use of image and metaphor. He and his companions have insisted in their poetry and criticism that the image possesses a priority over the abstract idea. In Louis D, Rubin, Jr.'s words,
"They have taken over the pioneering work done by the
Imagists and gone further. They have been instrumental in reviving contemporary interest in the Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century constructed that poetry is with complex imagery and metaphor."^
In his essay "Poetry Modern and Unmodern", Tate has mentioned that he himself first experienced the shock to the twentieth century sensibility out of which modernism developed, through reading James Thomson, the author of The
City of Dreadful Night.^ Thomson's inflated rhetoric and echolalia merely adumbratad the center of psychic and moral interest that was later articulated by poets like Yeats and
Eliot. Concerning his own poetry Tate has further stated:
"It remained (for me) to find the right language and to establish a center from which it could be spoken; for the poet is never wholly aware of his subject until his language is able to speak it, and to render it to the entire human being, to both the sensibility and the intellect, at that focus of awareness at which he does not know whether he is thinking or feeling."^ 78
According to Brooks, to bridge the gap between reason and emotion in the modern man has been the special task of the great twentieth poets like Yeats, Eliot and Tate.^
Moreover, Tate's preoccupation with history and time in his poetry is closely related also to John Crow Ransom's characteristic problem : of man living under the dispensation of science — modern man suffering from a dissociation of sensibility.
Cleanth Brooks has quoted a few more remarks of Tate and one can clearly see how Tate was very deeply influenced by T.S. Eliot's theory of impersonality in art. The first view he quotes is about artistic detachment: "The flesh is the scourge of intellect, but art takes no sides, and so the result is simply spirit and body juxtaposed. "•'•° The second remark is about the impersonality of art: "Art is a grim dominion, and personalities have no place in it."''"^
Tate had clearly realized that a poem is something made, not simply something uttered.
Thus, knowing modernity and the sources of its power
Allen Tate was determined in his early twenties what strategies could serve his purpose in addressing the audience he intended. That tactic was, according to M.E.
Bradford "highly conscious, dramatic and impersonal — a procedure calculated (after Eliot, ....) to, circumvent the 79 modern reader's resistance to poetry in general and to traditionalist poetry in particular, "•'^^ Like Eliot, he had realised that the modern reader can be influenced by dramatic presentation of a mind in motion to participate in attitudes or emotions he would not ordinarily tolerate if they were thrust upon him with direct assertion.
With Tate, as with Eliot, there is a temptation to identify the speaker in the verse with its maker. The reader has to realize that Tate speaks through a mask, adopts a character (persona) to make that created summary self available to the reader's independent judgement.
Subjective lyric association or pure imagism were the poetic modes in vogue when Tate began his career. Both were consequences of the entire aesthetic impasse toward which the entire craft had been moving since the European
Renaissance. Tate and his Fugitive friends recognized that no serious poet could employ either. Yet these very modes did define the expectations of any audience as they were so conditioned in the matter of reading or hearing of the verse. There was only one way out of this trap - a procedure followed by some of the best poets since the seventeenth century. M.E. Bradford calls it
"a method for registering and figuring forth the recalcitrant particularity of "the world's body". . . •'•^ Tate 80 refracted what he observed of the external complex of the contingencies through telling language. It is the poetry of experience.
In short, good poetry according to Tate consisted of
coherence of imagery, the relation of multiple and ambiguous meanings to the central motive, every phrase capable of undergoing logical examination without any possibility of the whole being resolved into pure thought.
In other words, it was experience emotional and cognitive at the same time.
In "Understanding Modern Poetry"(1940) Allen Tate remarks that Wordsworth's point of view is the point of view of the unreflecting reader, and it is a point of view appropriate and applicable to the poets of the Romantic movement ( Who are, to the general reader, all that poets ought to be or can be). Tate criticized the romantic movement for its having taught the reader to look for
inherently poetical objects, and to respond to them
emotionally in certain prescribed ways. According to Tate
the modern poetry that the general reader finds baffling
and obscure is a radical departure from the Romantic
achievement.
Tate points out that in modern poetry all experience becomes potentially the material of poetry - not merely the 81 pretty and the agreeable - and the modern poet makes it possible for the reader to respond to such material in all the ways in which men every where may feel and think. Tate justifies the complexity of modern poetry in following words:
"...the modern poet has a little the better of the argument, for to him poetry is not a special package tied in pink ribbon : it is one of the ways that we have of knowing the world. And since the world is neither wholly pretty nor wholly easy to understand, the poetry becomes a very difficult affair, demanding both in its writing and in its reading all the intellectual power that we have."
In support of his justification Tate argues:
"...if technique, diction, analysis, and the other are irrelevant in the reading of poetry, in what respect does poetry differ from automobiles : can one not be conditioned to automobiles? "
Tate sees a bad poetic theory at the bottom of the popular complaint that modern poetry is difficult.
According to him it is a kind of poetry that requires of the reader the fullest cooperation of all his intellectual resources, all his knowledge of the world, all the persistence and alertness that the modern reader thinks of giving only to scientific studies. Tate expects the reader 82 of modern poetry to do more than respond, one might perform an act of intelligence, of knowing, of cognition. He instructs that "...in finest poetry, we cannot have it both ways. We can have a multiple meaning through ambiguity, but we cannot have an incoherent structure of images."
These theoretical principles, influenced by the revival of the Metaphysical poets by Elioti can be seen reflected in Tate's poetry.
Allen Tate's imagery, like the Metaphysical conceits, is a complex phenomenon. For instance, in 'Death of Little
Boys' (1925) Tate writes:
And over his chest the covers in the ultimate dream
Will mount to teeth, ascend the eyes, press back
The locks - while round his sturdy belly gleam
Suspended breaths, white spars above the wreck:
Till all the guests come in to look, turn down
their palms, and delirium assails the cliff
of Norway where you ponder, and your little town Reels
like a sailor drunk in a rotten skiff.•'^^
Vivienne Koch has thrown light on the imagery in this poem.
In her article "The Poetry of Allen Tate" she has shown how the death is individualized. The suspended breaths that gleam round the sturdy belly are the breaths of not only the boy, but the boy in man. *You' stands for a 83 questioning, dubious intellect, pondering like Hamlet.
Delirium stands for 'death'. "Your little town' is something built, made, the ego. She states, "Here the image of a dead boy as a wreck and the little town (the ego) about to be wrecked converge in the sea symbolism. It is at this point (the crisis of the poem) that the fusion of meanings is consummate, and the question of permanence
(identity) arises like a lonely phoenix from the wreck of the little boys (your wreck of course) ".''^^
In the * Progress of Oenia' (1928) Tate depicts gloom as a cobra:
Dream-emptied by some shifting
Monna Bice, You I resume:
Continually suffer the habitual
Cobra of my slightest gloom. ( p 24 )
Gloom is visualized as a cobra here because gloom also weighs down a person like the poison of the cobra.
Further Tate projects warmth by comparing a part of human body to a part of nature's cycle — a season:
Your mouth is more passionate than any summer.(p 24)
And he uses another conceit in the following lines:
Do you remember how your hair
contained both ears ? It never hid
Them quite, but climbed to a pyramid 84
More dazzling than superstitious Kings
Set in the sand as their playthings. (p 26)
Hair seen as pyramid is a fusion of disparate
elements like human beauty and the eloquence of
architecture. The fields of love and construction, the natural and the stately have been put together. It is the
fusion of the present and the magnificence of history, the macro and the micro, the immediate and the eternal as well.
'The Meaning of Life' is a monologue and the last piece
of it contains a ghastly conceit. Tate argues that one's
sense of proper decoration might alter, however, there is a passion feeding on itself, unspoken to and unspeaking
. . . subterranean
As a black river full of eyeless fish
Heavy with spawn; with a passion for time
longer than the arteries of a cave. (p 74)
Thus he depicts passion as an underground black river,
joining the heterogeneous elements — the instinct in terms
of geographical entity. Moreover, the river is full of
eyeless fish and heavy with spawn - a symbol of blindness
and confusion. Life exists speechlessly but essentially in
the fish heavy with spawn who are not blind but simply
'eyeless'. Such a passion, instinct or life has a zest for
time and its zest is seen to be longer than the arteries of 85 a cave. In this image the cave stands for the evil and the arteries stand for its extension to form a fearsome conceit.
The symbol of the concrete, irrational essence of life
— the blood - receives a surprising amplification by its association with the cave. According to Cleanth Brooks (as quoted by Howard Nemerov) "The two symbols are united on the basis of their possession of * arteries'. The blood is associated with 'lust', is subterranean (bi/rraed within the body), is the source of 'passion'."^^
The blood and the cave symbols unite the liquid and the solid, the hot and the cold, that which is fluid and that which is rigid. This combination, according to Nemerov, "is used to characterize the relation of becoming to become, of life to death, of process to result; in its more general form it suggests the common metaphor whereby forms 'harden' or freeze into lifeless conventions, and means that civilization is achieved by 'hardening of arteries', that
20 all effort produces monuments."
In 'The Meaning of Death' — (the sequel) the cave and arteries reappear toward the end. The poem is an after- dinner speech. The speaker, with a sharp turn of irony, is permitted to know and say where his program is taking him.
Science leads to 'perfect accident'-destruction. The fish 86 in the * Meaning of Life' are eyeless, but the speaker in
'The Meaning of Death' and his audience are in the cold sleep of science- or blinded by science, and they close the eyes of the world too:
Lest darkness fall and time fall
In a long night when learned arteries
Mounting the ice and sum of barbarous time
Shall yield, without essence, perfect accident.
We are the eyelids of defeated caves. (p 76)
The poem 'Cul -de - Sac' opens with these lines:
God took a crayon in his hand
And sketched a swift line of distress
Who will remember how he loved
Who will remember happiness? (p 173)
The following stanza runs:
The ringing canticles of hope
The azure rhythms of his brains
Threaded the years that else were blind
And lured her back to him again. (p 174)
Here the rhythms of one's brain represent thoughts and ideas and they are portrayed to be azure - bright blue like the sky. Thus, the world of thoughts, the quality of music, and elevation of art, unify into a conceit.
The blind years in the next line represent 87 incomprehensibility of time. The creativity of the man, the rhythms of his brain or simply his verses, threaded or connected the otherwise dark years. The years or the countable divisions of time were given a sense of consistency or coherence by the creative vision of the man, suggests Tate. 'Blind years' is again a fusion of human disability and the concept of time.
The fifth stanza contains yet another conceit — his otherness self-satisfiedly smiles at the doorway of her soul which was a shrine. The invisible spirit is thus described as an object of devotion. Here the microcosm is projected as macrocosm, the eternal as the immediate.
The otherness of the man then speaks out:
Now here upon the laughing fire
I lay the gleanings of the years -
A mildewed faith, some mutterings -
And(schorched jfrom passion all the tears.
(Pl74)
Small bits of knowledge picked from various sources- words and silences, gestures, experiences etc. are the gleanings of the years. Along with them is his faith affected with fungi. This is a strange fusion of the opposites presented in a paradoxical manner as faith is supposed ever to be unaffected. 88
In the next stanza, the man reports that the precious
secrets of her kissing have been devils dancing on his
lips. Here the memory of the act of kissing is united with
the image of the devil representing evil passion. But the
trouble is his craziness is now just not there.
The/eight Jitanza states that the loss of craziness on
the part of the lover or his impotence has turned the woman
into a scared dog (with salted wounds) that stares. The wounds stand for helplessness; that is the consequence of
impotence.
In 'Suicide' (1922), a sonnet, there is a surprising conceit in the first four lines of the octave:
I have felt darkness lead me by the hand
Over the hill to greet the singing dawn;
Have watched neat clouds garmenting heavens land.
Flecking the sky like ladies on a lawn:
(P 190)
Tate enlists here what he has felt, watched, bought, seen,
kissed, dreamed and known - to say what he can give from
the treasure of his memory.
In the third line quoted above, four unlike elements
are put together-clouds, garment, heaven and land — all in
connection with the sky. In the fourth line the clouds
patch the sky up like ladies on a lawn. The comparisons are 89 unexpected and hence surprising.
The second most important characteristic of
Metaphysical poetry is logical framework. Tate's poem *The
Cross' would stand as the best example of the unification of experience and intellectual exuberance, the subjective and the objective, for reaching the point of conclusion.
The theme of 'The Cross' is that once a man or a culture has sought a knowledge of religion (Christianity), that knowledge cannot be ignored. If it is, then the consequence is destructive.
There is a place that some men know,
I cannot see the whole of it
Nor how I came there.... (p 33)
These opening lines state that one is merely there without being able to say where he exactly is. The place, unspecified becomes gradually visible. And the sight quite frightening. The verbs "know" and "see" are to be understood in theological terms. To "know" is to obtain knowledge unto salvation just as to "see" is to see clearly, perceive, understand or realize or be convinced.
The speaker is blind in spiritual sense as he cannot see the "place" — the cross in its old sanctity.
Tate suggests that the modern man can no longer understand, "see" the concepts of traditional Christianity, 90 as his vision is either short, fault—finding or fragmentary; not unified.
In the following lines Tate attracts the reader's attention, to the entire Western tradition:
Long ago
Flame burst out of a secret pit
Crushing the world with such a light
The day-sky fell to moonless black.
The kingly sun to hateful night
For those once seeing, turning back:
(P 33)
This passage elaborates the opening lines. The bursting flame is the symbol of revelation of Christ's glory. The secret pit implies the overtones of the Christian hell, The complexity lies in the fact that the revelation of Christ's glory is also the revelation of terrible possibilities. In one sense Christ can be seen also as a destroyer as he destroyed a view of nature and a view of hiiman experience.
Man, after Christ, could never be at ease with the world or
re.
:cording to Christianity, man's state after the Fall is the state of sin. This is an unkind principle, just as
"I bring not peace, but a sword". The speaker battles with such challengeable aspects of Christian glory. So in one 91 sense, this revelation crushed the world.
To the speaker the Sun which once ruled human destiny seems to have lost its old significance because of the new force of the Christian revelation. Therefore he wonders if that is why "the day—sky fell to moonless black" after the crucifixion: This leads him to see even the concept of
Christian providence full of ambiguity:
For love so hates mortality
Which is the providence of life
She will not let it blessed be
But curses it with mortal strife,
(p 33)
Christ's love appears to be ambiguous to the speaker, as
Christ's commandment asks humans to love one another in spite of the fact that pure love cannot be ordered to exist. Moreover Christ who embodies God's love, may also destroy. Providence may imply the care of God for his creatures, but the same blessing may also reverse upon one to become a curse —in case of those whqj rever |t but fail to win it. Thus love can strangely turn into Tiate.
The speaker further asserts that one can stand beside the Cross and in a world destroying pit at the same time as the Cross is blinding. He ironically implies that knowledge may indeed damn. 92
Tate uses a striking image in the following lines:
Until beside the blinding rood
Within that world-destroying pit
-Like young wolves that have tasted blood-
Of death, men taste no more of it.
(P 33)
The word blood, according to R.K. Meiners, "... functions as a symbol of the historical and metaphysical tension in which modern man finds himself. He cannot return to the world of natural religion once he has glimpsed the significance of the supernatural any more than wolves that have tasted blood can return to some pre-carnivorous diet.
Blood also has obvious connotations with the blood of
Christ. "^-"^ In short modern man is caught between two salvations - the natural and the supernatural.
The world no longer nourishes the modern man as they have become blind to the world. So they are "So blind, in so severe a place." The speaker doubts the value of baptism and the new life it symbolized. To him the modern men seem to be buried with Christ. Thus with lack of vision they
lead towards damnation.
The last lines intensify the anxiety instead of offering a solution. 93
The last alternatives they face
Of life, without the life to save
Being from all salvation weaned -
A stag charged both at heel and head:
Who would come back is turned a fiend
Instructed by the fiery dead (p 33)
According to Meiners, the stag image "develops conceptually and imagistically out of the earlier material ... the image of the wolves tasting blood. "^^ Just as the stag is charged at both the head and the heel, modern man is on the horns of a dilemma of the two salvations. His will may be perverted if he rebels against supernaturalism.
To sum up, the opening three lines form the premiss as they state that speaker is blind in the spiritual sense.
What follows the premiss is its elaboration - how the complexity of the situation lies in the fact that the revelation of Christ's glory is also the revelation of terrible possibilities: how Christ destroyed a view of nature and a view of hiiman experience. Lines 3 to 8 elaborate this subjective perception of Christianity.
This leads the speaker to see the concept of Christian
Providence full, of ambiguity. Lines 9-12 elaborate how
Providence - the blessing may also become a curse for those who fail to attain it. 94
Then comes the assertion that one may stand beside the
Cross and in a world destroying pit at the same time -
implying knowledge may indeed damn. Lines 13-16 assert how
modern man cannot return to the world of natural religion
once he knows the significance of the supernatural just as
the wolves having tasted blood cannot return to an 1 (otherwise diet^
What comes out in the light of the premiss and
elaborations is the conclusion that modern man is on the
horns of a dilemma of the two salvations: he is a stag
charged at both the head and heel. And that the last
alternatives he faces intrigue him and there seems to be no
salvation. The last lines as a conclusion intensify the
anxiety and imply that there is no solution to the problem.
The subjective mind of the poet moves from the
thoughts of an objective fact to the /decution\of it and
then it leads to conclusion. The poet uses the device of
elaborate stanza for personal argument and with the help of
paradoxes poses several challenges to the conventional in
this poem.
The complexity of this poem lies in the condition it
tries to examine. The images grow logically out of the
poem's concern - the meaning of Christian tradition in the
present time. They are logically coherent to the subject- 95 matter. The fusion of paradoxical elements into images, the series of challenges to the conventional, and the extraordinary realization of conceptual and emotional experience make the poem a fine example of the logical framework of a Metaphysical poem. It reflects Eliot's preoccupation with the religious and the Metaphysicals.
Tate's 'Winter Mask' (1942) written in the memory of
W.B. Yeats would also assist one in examining the logical framework.
The first section of the poem poses the question whether there is still anything worth living for:
Towards nightfall when the wind
Tries the eaves and casements
(A winter wind of the mind
Long gathering its will)
I lay the minds contents
Bare as upon a table.
And ask in a time of war
Whether there is still
To a mind frivolously dull
Anything worth living for (p 111)
Here, as often, Tate uses the first stanza for creating a particular mood and presenting a thesis statement which relates to the body of the longer poem. The mind's private 96
contents, thought in terms of objects laid bare upon a
table, stand as a symbol of self—analysis.
The third section of the poem presents a symbol of
terror - a poisoned rat in the wall. The creature cuts
through wall like a knife but it is blind, drying and
small. Finally, driven to cold water it dies of the water
of life. Just as self analysis in the first stanza paradoxically leads the poet to a question instead of getting to a solution, the elixir of life paradoxically kills the rat. Thus the giver of life is projected as the
taker of it by Tate. The next few lines elaborate why water
stands as the symbol of damnation here, as Tate depicts a traitor who lead his friend to slaughter and is seen biting the victim's head. This projects the horror of stark reality at the time of war.
In the sixth and last section Tate writes:
I asked the master Yeats
Whose great style could not tell
Why it is man hates
His own salvation,
Prefers the way to hell.
And finds his last safety
In the self made curse that bore
Him towards damnation: 97
The drowned undrowned by the sea
The sea worth living for (p 113)
These lines express Tate's lament that in the modern world sight is desperately needed, yet men are ignorant. Without real life they are blind. As a result they develop a hatred for the world in which they seem to live, a hatred for themselves and a hatred for God if he exists or a hatred toward something for failing to exist. As modern man ignores the supernatural because he cannot believe in it, due to the worldly rot around him which is like God's hideous face, the promise of Christian provision turns into hate and leads him towards damnation; his will is, as seen in *The Cross', either perverted or made impotent. The reality around him is so horrifying that hell seems to be a better alternative, as he doubts if there is anything like salvation attainable at all.
The first section quoted earlier sets the premiss in the form of the question whether there is still anything worth living for. The question comes out of self—analysis and that is elaborated.
Just as self—analysis in the first stanza leads to a question instead of solution, the elixir of life Kills the rat in the third section which is another elaborate stanza.
This implies how the giver of life is also the taker of it. 98
The conclusion of statement and its elaborations is presented in the last section: due to lack of faith and vision, or the inability to believe because of the situation, a hatred for the world and oneself is developed in modern man and this leads him to damnation, And this is a self—made curse.
So far as contemporanity of diction is concerned, one can be struck by Tate's use of words and phrases from various fields including sports (dribling couplets), war
(to batter through, flog, crunch), geography ( a wasted sea
) , theosophy (eternity, rumour of mortality, sacrament, mildewed faith), botany (wan lilies, splayed leaves, winter tree ), animal life (the habitual, cobra of gloom, eyeless fish, lion's jaws, iron lizards, sheep, dragon's braith, skared dog with salted wounds), architecture (pyramid, cave, empty hall, well), physiology (arteries, eyelids of caves,), mythology (Venus, the sea-gods), music (the azure rhythms of brain), etc.
Thus as in the Metaphysical poetry the diction of
Tate's poems is drawn from far—flung fields. His poem *Fair
Cuirass Shattered' is a fine example of his intelligent use of words and phrases. The sonnet is about two conflicting attitudes and Tate's diction very effectively communicates the tension generated by them. The octave is full of 99 romantic, erotic diction whereas the sestet is stuffed with mechanistic words and phrases. The octave contains the following lines:
One time I thought that sunset's flaiming air
Could forge in me the steel to batter through
The hardy walls of men; that they, as you.
Would quake at onslaughts from a poet's lair.
We then lived roses; I had fooled despair
And boxed him up and flogged his retinue,
Made strong by cheeks and lips: I sucked in dew.
And dragged the world, a weakling, by the hair.
(p 179)
Here the poet recollects the state when he had been made strong by love that he could overcome any sort of opposition. He uses the verb—phrase 'forge steel into' for the verb *to empower', the word 'steel' represents 'grit',
'to batter through' stands for 'to overcome' and 'the hardy walls of men' represents 'external opposition'. Thus the ideas from the field of love are made to look similar to a scientific process as well as the battlefield that are part of the modern world.
In lines four to seven the device of personification is used. The abstract despair was fooled by the speaker.
Moreover the 'he' despair was boxed up and his substaff 100 traveling with him (retinue) was also flogged by the speaker. Here the field of love is united with the battlefield, with the use of words like box up, retinue,
flog etc. And the eighth line makes a witty tall—claim where the speaker says, he had grown so larger than life with the elixir of love that he could drag the world like a weakling is dragged by the hair.
The sestet contains following lines:
This hour is roseless; ruddiness is snuffed;
Wan lilies, smutted in a dragon's braith,
Are limp; and iron lizards track the earth
To crunch men's bones, and fledgy clouds are buffed.
I suck in smoke: I smile at grimy mirth.
And laugh to think that you had parried death.
Th ^GG^ (P 79)
This is a statement about the present. The past was all roses whereas the present hour is roseless. The expression
* ruddiness is snuffed' conveys that the sign of health is all pinched off. Sad lilies are 'smutted in dragon's braith' — the phrase implies the terror of the time. The succeeding symbol- iron lizards tracking the earth — also suggests the same feeling as they crunch the bones of human beings. Tate portrays how plant and human life is destroyed by the animal-like or inhuman modern war technology, Thus, 101 putting metal, animal element and destruction together,
Tate expresses his perception of the violence and mercilessness in the modern world, The words 'iron',
* track', 'crunch' are used to express the sense with greater impact. The diction here is mechanistic.
The couplet clarifies the disparity between the past and the horrible present. In the past the speaker used to suck in dew; now he has only smoke. The sonnet ends with a realization - now the speaker laughs to think his' fiancy had evaded death. v^
Wit — the mixture of delight and surprise and of levity and seriousness can be found in the shocking fusion of the disparate elements, apt or precise diction, convincing and dramatic presentation with the use of paradox and irony. The reader is( in the )danger of comparing
Tate's poetry to that of John Donne and Andrew Marvell and coming to the conclusion that Tate is not as surprising or shocking as the seventeenth century poets. Therefore, one has to understand Tate not as a pale imitator of Donne and
Marvell but as a poet accutely conscious of the stark reality of his time, with all his consciousness gravely affected by the invasion of industry, war, confusion due to
social circumstance, etc. His emotions, feelings, ideas
seem to be bogged down by dehumanization and isolation that 102 a modern writer could perceive or visualize.
Therefore Tate's diction and imagery is full of words, phrases from animal life, the mechanistic world of science, the battlefield. And due to his meditative attitude, words, phrases and images from the world of theology, religion also recur, mostly to express disgust over the loss of tradition or culture. The bitter reality of the modern world reflects through the use of bitter irony. However, there are traces of the quality of surprise in his poems.
For instance, in his sonnet *Debt' (1922) (pl75) Tate calls his woman a lonely sail that gemmed a wasted sea. The sail represents the woman here just as the wasted sea represents the life of the poet, and her loving him is as precious as prizing with a gem. Putting sea-life and love together Tate has achieved the effect of delight and surprise.
In the fifth line of the poem her wisdom is called a spendthrift and it offered the poet a costless cloak of fertile power. Apparel and power, the two unlike elements are united here. As the power is fertile, its source - the cloak is costless. The expression is highly suggestive as what it simply means is the gift of wisdom is invaluable.
Next he says he was led by her up a steep path to taste eternity bubbling in an hour. In this expression the 103 ultimate is united with the immediate, the divine with the earthly, the immortal with the momentary - with zeal.
The 'Progress of OEnia' is also equally witty. The line *your mouth is more passionate than any summer' (p
24) projects warmth by rating a part of human body higher than a part (season) of the cycle of nature. Tate praises his beloved using hyperbole for compliment.
Further he praises her hair climbing her ears like pyramids. But again these pyramids are more dazzling than the ones set in the sand by superstitious kings as their playthings. Now Tate compares human beauty to the eloquence of architecture, two unlike elements - love and construction have been united. And in one stroke the poet achieves so many things - praise, hyperbole, slander suggesting what the kings had to set in the sand has been god-given to the woman and also his rejoice as lover.
In the concluding stanza poet the lover takes a lower position-
No glories of your breast and thighs
Shall these poor verses advertise -
Only the dry debility
Of a spent wind in a winter tree, (p 27)
Tate mocks at himself and his creative ability by saying
that he cannot be as bold as her; as compared to her assets 104 his verses are poor and they cannot really show or reflect her appeal. This is the consequence of his loss of youth or vigor (spent wind) that has become his weakness (debility) .
The weakness has made him unproductive (dry) and therefore
Tate mocks at himself, projecting himself as a worn-out winter—tree. Perhaps only his barren state will be highlighted by his poor verses.
In 'Mr. Pope' Tate writes:
And he who dribbled couplets - like a snake
Coiled to a lithe precision in the Sun
Is missing. The jar is empty; you may break
It only to find that Mr. Pope is gone. (p 6)
Here Tate implies how Pope's couplets had a poisonous sting as he wrote satirical verse. Moreover Pope's skill of writing is symbolized with dribbling and this contains double meaning. First, it is a natural process - a flow or trickle drop by drop suggesting naturalness of style on the part of Pope. Second, it means quick and short passing in the field of football, suggesting skill or play.
The wit of these lines lies no doubt in the fusion of heterogenous elements, of writing with dribbling and coiling, which present an apt and surprising image closer to a conceit. However, what is more interesting about the whole expression is that Tate's wit in these lines 105 satisfies the definition of wit given by Pope himself —
"Nature to advantage dressed / What oft was thought but never so well expressed."
To sum up, in Tate's poetry there is a continuous relationship between physical perception and metaphysical vision. His poetry reflects the fundamental principle which is set forth in one of his letters to Donald Davidson in
1925:
"Poetry must be the expression of a whole mind -not gurgles and spasms and ecstasies over every wayside hawthorn brush .... (not) a report of sensation, it is a resolution of sensation through all the faculties of the mind. Poetry to me is successive instances of the whole rhythm of thought, and that includes reason, emotion . . . the entire phantasy of sensation. "^•^
Naturally Tate's complex imagery grows out of the complexity of situation he perceives. The cause for such imagery is a daulity, in the words of Howard Nemerov, "the duality of One and Many. Metaphysical poetry is the poetry of dilemma, and the dilemma which paradoxes and antitheses continually seek to display is the famous one .... the relation of the One with the Many, the leap by which infinity becomes finite, essence becomes existence; the commingling of the spirit with the matter, the working of 106
God in the world. "^^ Hence the use of conceit like imagery in concord with the complexity of the modern world and the situations it forces upon the twentieth century mind.
So far as logical framework is concerned it is a rewarding exercise to see how emotions are shaped by reasoning with the help of paradoxical imagery to make the poem elaborately argumentative. Tate's pattern is to subjectively perceive an objective fact, deduct it and lead to the conclusion. He makes effective use of the elaborate stanza. And with a series of paradoxes poses several challenges to the traditional.
For Tate the language of the poem was the poem. His idiom is not only suitable to his themes but highly suggestive. As it deals with contemporary situation, words and adjectives from the branches of science occur in his poems. As he was serious with the loss of culture, words from the fields of history and religion recur. Like Eliot he was interested in reinstating Myth. Some of his idiom springs from absorption in Latin, Greek and Mythology, rooted in his early education. However, he can handle simple and pure diction equally effectively.
Due to the violence and destruction Tate perceived, his diction illuminates animal symbolism a great deal. His 'eagle' represents mind, 'cuttlefish' implies memory. 107
*stag' stands for modern man, whereas 'centaur' denotes human bestiary and 'wolf hints death, Cleanth Brooks has illustrated how Tate' s adjectives challenge the readers' imagination :
". . . . in the "Ode to the Confederate Dead" November becomes not "drear" November, "Sober" November, but
"Ambitious November with the humors of the year". The
curiosity of an angel's stare" is not "idle" or "quiet" or
"probing" or any other Predictable adjective, but "brute"
curiosity. "^^
So as to wit, one can be struck by the mixtures of both delight and surprise, and levity and seriousness. But, due to irony, mostly his humour is dark. His sharp ironical vision helps him perceive and bring out paradoxes otherwise
subtle.
Thus almost all the major Metaphysical elements can be
traced in Tate's poetry. One of the lines in his poem
"Stranger" can be seen as the definition of his poetry: it
is, *A new figuration of an old phenomenon', (p 189) 108
Notes and References
1. As quoted by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., : "The Serpent in
the Mulberry Bush" Allen Tate And His Work ; Critical
Evaluations. (Ed.) Radcliffe Squires, Minnepolis,
Univ. of Minnesota .. 1972, p 209.
2. Louis D.Rubin,Jr.: "The Serpent in the Mulberry Bush"
Allen Tate And His Wok:Critical Evaluations.(Ed.)
Radcliffe Squires. Minnepolis,Univ.of Minnesota,
1972,p 210.
3. Ibid, p 214.
4. T.S.Eliot "After Strange Gods". London, Faber and
Faber,1934^ |=» 15.
5. As quoted by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., "The Serpent in the
Mulberry Bush". Allen Tate And His Work : Critical
Evaluations. (Ed.) Radcliffe Squires, Minnepolis,
Univ. of Minnesota, 1972. p 218.
6. Louis D. Rubin, Jr. "The Serpent in the Mulberry
Bush". Allen Tate And His Work : Critical Evaluations.
(Ed.) Radcliffe Sauires. Minnepolis,
Univ. of Minnesota, 1972 p 213.
7. As quoted by Cleanth Brooks, "Allen Tate and the
Nature of Modernism", Southern Review 12:1976 p 691.
8. As quoted by cleanth Brooks, "Allen Tate and the
Nature of Modernism". Southern Review 12:1976 p 691. 109
9. Cleanth Brooks, "Allen Tate and the Nature of
Modernism" Southern Review 12 : 1976 p 691.
10. Ibid, p 686.
11. Cleanth Brooks, "Allen Tate and the Nature of
Modernism" Southern Review 12:1976 p 691.
12. M.E. Bradford, "Origins and Beginnings" Allen Tate And
His Work: Critical Evaluations. (Ed.) Radcliffe
Squires. Minnepolis, Univ.of Minnesota, 1972, p 198.
13. Ibid, p 191
14. Tate, Allen "Understanding Modern Poetry" : Essays of
Four Decades• Oxford University Press, Lndon, 1970, pp
156,157.
15. Ibid, p 160
16. Ibid, p 167
17. Allen Tate, Collected Poems 1919-1976.
Farrar Straus Giroux, New York 1977.
I have taken all the illustrations of his poetry from
the same book.Hereafter, the page numbers of the poems
will be quoted in the body of the text itself.
18. Vivienne Koch, "The Poetry of Allen Tate". Allen
Tate and His Work: Critical Evaluations. (Ed.)
Radcliffe Squires. Minnepolis, Univ. of Minnesota,
1972, p 256.
19. As quoted by Howard Nemerov, "The Current and the 110
Frozen Stream", Ibid, p 248
20. Howard Nemerov, "The Current and the Frozen Stream"
Allen Tate And His Work: Critical Evaluations.(Ed.)
Radcliffe Squires. Minnepolis Univ. of Minnesota, 1972,
p 248.
21. R.K. Meiners, "On "The Cross"" Allen Tate And His
Work;Critical Evaluations. (Ed.) Radcliffe Squires.
Minnepolis, Univ. of Minnesota, 1972.p 228
22. R.K. Meiners, "On "The Cross"" Allen Tate And His
Work: Critical Evaluations.(Ed.) Radcliffe Squires.
Minnepolis, Univ. of Minnesota, 1972, p 230.
23. Cleanth Brooks. "Allen Tate and the Nature of
Modernism". Southern Review 12:197 6 p 690.
24. Howard Nemerov, "The Current and the Frozen Stream",
Allen Tate And His Work: Critical Evaluations, (Ed.)
Radcliffe Squires. Minnepolis, Univ,of Minnesota
,1972,p 243.
25. Cleanth Brooks, "Allen Tate's Poetry".
Allen Tate And His work: Critical Evaluations (Ed. )
Radcliffe Squires. Minnepolis, Univ. of Minnesota,
1972, p 151