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GEN

INTRODUCTORY

ENERAL observations on the art of poetry are common enough. Critics, for example, are apt to back their particular judgments by asserting broadly that "Poetry should do this" or "Poetry cannot do/ that." If a critic is sufficiently lavish of such remarks we say that he has a theory of poetry: his theory being nothing but a conviction of what poetry ought to do. Thus Matthew Arnold, as everybody knows, had a theory that poetry should be a criticism of life.

It is not in this sense that I am taking the theory of poetry as my topic. If it were, there would be many of you, I hope, whose minds would be busy with demands for my authority: and what authority could I give you? There is no one who can say what poetry ought to be on any better grounds than his own personal preference. But if I simply attempt to say what poetry is in fact-the things it does and the way it does them—you will always know the authority I am building on: poetry itself.

Let me make another disclaimer. I shall try to describe very sketchily, as you will find-how poetry does its business; but I have no notion of telling any one how to write poetry. This has been attempted. Baudelaire undertook to turn any one into a poet in so

many lessons; but I never heard that he succeeded. No one can be taught how to be an artist; but it is nevertheless quite true that no one can be an artist who has not learned his medium. You must know your perspective or your counterpoint-the grammar of your art-if you do not want to be like a high-minded foreigner labouring his inefficient discourse in broken English. But once you have learnt the grammar, then there is no one who can help you but yourself. The person who wishes to write poetry, however, has already arrived at that stage. He has no perspective or counterpoint to learn, because he has been learning command of his medium ever since he was a baby; if he has not got hold of it now, no one can teach him. And for the use that he is to make of his medium-of language, that is he can only consult his own talent.

What is left, then, if we are not to dogmatise on the duties of poetry, nor to prescribe for its composition? More than enough, at any rate, to occupy this course of lectures. Poetry has usually been regarded as one of the notable facts in the life of man; and a general analysis of its nature and methods cannot but improve our knowledge of ourselves-of what we are and what we would like to be. There is a feeling that it is dangerous to examine too nicely into the way poetry works. It may be like taking a watch to pieces; you may not be able to put it together again, or if you do, it may not go as well as it did before. I think, on the contrary, that the closer you look into poetry, the more you have to discover, and to enjoy.