ROMANTICISM

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 733, 31 July 1953, Page 12

ROMANTICISM

THE TRUE VOICE OF FEELING: Studies in English Romantic Poetry, by Herbert Read; Faber and Faber. English price, 25/-. "THE studies in this book are intended to build a case for the supremacy of romanticism in modern poetry. Sir Herbert Read identifies romanticism with "organic form," and by this he seems to mean form which comes from poetic integrity. If a poet’ is "sincere," his work.belongs to art, which is seenin Schelling’s definition-as "the active bond between the soul and nature, between essence and existence." The year 1798--when Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads -is taken as the beginning of the modern movement. Much great poetry had, of course, been written before then. Sir Herbert is therefore obliged to admit that "in so far as the poetry of the past is sincere, to that extent it is organic in form." At this point one begins to feel doubtful. Sincerity and value are not necessarily found together. And although it may be true that there has always béen unity of feeling and expression in the best poetry, it is equally true that a poet can use a conventional pattern without loss of integrity. Even in "rhetorical" poetry, which places the emphasis more on form

than on feeling (and which Sir Herbert Read describes as merely a_ literary game) thé skill of the poet can be a necessary elemeft in the evolution of technique, and therefore of expression. It is dangerous to see one movement as the main stream. Poetry is vision; but it is also music and imagery, and sometimes there is too much of one element and not enough of the others, The clear statement may have little value when the mood is shallow-since to be clear about small things does nothing to widen the range of consciousness. But when the romantics have rediscovered the world, and have passed from the trivial to the profound, the classic discipline has a new, medicinal virtue. The second part of the book, "essays ancillary to the main theme," gives attention to individual poets. Sir Herbert Read leans heavily on psycho-analysis in -his treatment of Shelley. He does full justice to a poet who, he believes, still suffers too much from disapproval of his private life. But in trying to explain the workings of Shelley’s mind he falls back on a drastic psychological formula. Shelley’s "lack of objectivity in his attitude towards the outer world,’ as revealed in his poetry, is seen as evidence _that the poet was "still firmly bound to that state of consciousness which succeeds the primary identification with the mother’ — or, more briefly, was unconsciously homosexual. It seems unlikely that this can be true of a man as obviously heterosexual as Shelley. The imagery used in his poems can be made to fit the theory; but the critic who tries to explain poetic diction as.a personal symbolism must surely be forgetting that much of it is borrowed or consciously selected; and this was especially true of Shelley. who was deeply read in

Greek literature.

H.