HOUSMAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 845, 13 December 1929, Page 16

HOUSMAN

(Written for THE SUE) T HAVE been rather puzzled, after reading about ten or a dozen different essays on Housman, by critics of every possible shade of prejudice, by their Invariable insistence (usually in a faintly apologetic manner) on the pessimism of “A Shropshire Lad” and "Last Poems.” As far as this criticism goes, I have no objection to it. To suggest that a man who habitually uses such phrases as “Whatever brute and blackguard made the world” is an ex-officio member of the Sunshine League, is to ignore the obvious. In addition he is, of course, a Stoic, and on that account the most English —or Anglo-Saxon—poet I am acquainted with. The Anglo-Saxons are a race of Stoics, and the very fact that we so often speak of a man’s accepting a situation "philosophically" —meaning, you will observe “stoically” —almost implies that as a nation we are incapable of recognising any other attitude toward life. But to return to Housman. Where 1 disagree with his critics is in their willingness, almost without exception, to call him a pessimist and leave it at that. Now this seems to me so very inadequate as to amount to a direct misrepresentation of the true basis of llousman’s claim to the title of poet. Many poets, suffering from moral hysteria, have tried to be philosophers. That is to say. they have attempted to state philosophical problems and beliefs, in their literal terms, in English verse. So far as lam aware they have invariably failed; and the reason for their failure is patent. The very nature of poetry demands avoidance of a direct statement of the truth c philosophical or otherwise) the poet is trying to express. Certain poets, temporarily mesmerised by their social consciences, have felt that the proper function of verse is to act as a sort of moral traffic inspector to humanity, and have rushed in alarm into direct -statement of ethical and philosophical beliefs. However uplifting the results may have been as sermons, they have never to my knowledge succeeded in being poems, not, at all events, when the intention has been wholly homiletical or philosophical. On the other hand, a great deal (perhaps the larger part) of great poetry lias taken the form of philosophical statement, but in such cases the didactic side has been of no real consideration. In short, great poetry never aims at expressing a belief or a theory, but it frequently uses one as its tool, or rather, vessel. Housman’s outward garb is one that, is fashioned of sack-cloth. But to admit that pessimistic utterance is the intention, the ultimate meaning, of his work, is to say that Shelley intended bis “Ode to the West Wind” as an essay in meteorology. The sole purpose of poetry, if it can be said to have a purpose, is to evoke emotion, to increase the patient’s rate of vibration to the stimulus of external beauty. In fact, to increase the intensity of his being, and to make him “live more." (Let me say here, very hastily, in view of certain vehement remarks 1 once made on this page, that although the appeal of poetry is to the emotions, it. is compelled to reach its goal by way of the intellect, and is intellectual to that extent. Otherwise it might as well be compared to tickling the soles of a man’s feet.) The poetic value of Housman’s work lies in its peculiar success in stimulating emotion, in producing "ecstasy,” as Arthur Machen would say. He is a romanticist—possibly the best example in the whole of literature —and pessimism is always romantic. So that to dub him a pessimist and then stand off a few paces and applaud him or jeer at him (as the case may be), under the impression that you have compiled his poetic dossier with accuracy and completeness, is to criticise the chisel and ignore the sculpture, to coniine one’s attention to the bottle without attaching any significance to the beer inside it. If you Insist, on labelling him—a dangerous habit—call him a romanticist, rather than a pessimist. It will be nearer to the truth. Of course, Housman, like all great poets, is not for those who insist rather shrilly on their right to expect sermons in stones, and good advice in everything; and if you happen to be the sort of person who regards pessimism in the same light as bigamy or arson. Housman will storm your citadel in vain. Personally, lam repelled by the senile and burbling optimism of much of the poetry of T. E. Brown and Robert Browning. I can stand optimism or anything else up to a certain point, and I admire “Prospice” about as much as any poem I know. - But when Browning goes beyond that, I make my excuses. One can’t possibly keep prejudices without paying for them, and like the cheer-germ enthusiasts who dislike Housman, I miss a lot of good poetry. But that’s my own fault, as it is theirs. A. R. D. FAIRBTTRN.