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"Life in Poetry: Law in Taste. Two Series of Lectures delivered in Oxford, 1895-1900." By William John Courthope. London: Macmillan. 1901.
Mr. COURTHOPE tells us, mainly on the authority of Horace, that "the secret of life in poetry lies in the power to give individual form to universal ideas of nature adapted for expression in any of the recognised classes of metrical composition." That is a safe definition; it means little. "It will be best to conclude with reiterating the truth that, while the force of individual liberty and genius is absolutely necessary to inspire poetic conception with the breath of live, obedience to the law of the Universal in Nature is no less needful, if the life thus generated is to be enduring." That is not less true and not less vague. By the words life in poetry, Mr. Courthope tells elsewhere, "I mean the qualities in poetry, whatsoever they are, whencesoever they are derived, which have the power of producing enduring pleasure; and I have endeavoured to ascertain their nature by examining the works of poets who have been acknowledged, semper, ubique, ab omnibus, to be the living poets of the world". Mr. Courthope, who has edited Pope, naturally brings Pope into the question, and gives away much of his argument by doing so. He finds in Pope both his "life" and his "universal", and he apologises for the "limited idea of Nature, of the Universal" which he does, in a way, acknowledge, by saying, first, that "this restriction of knowledge to self-knowledge is only the completion of a tendency of thought which reveals itself in 'Paradise Lost'", and, secondly, that Pope's idea of Nature must be compared only with that of "the false wits of the seventeenth century, Phineas and Giles Fletcher, Donne, Crashaw, Quarles, and Cowley". But the question really is, whether Pope is, in the true sense, a poet at all; whether the prose force and finish of his character of Atticus, quoted elsewhere in the book, are, simply as poetry, the equivalent of the lines of Crashaw to Mrs. R. with the present of a Prayer-book, quoted as self-evidently ridiculous. We would assert that the two last lines of this quotation:
"Dropping with a balmy shower
A delicious dew of spices",
represent a level of poetry to which Pope never attained, in spite of his consummate ability. Pope is the most finished artist in prose that ever wrote in verse. It is impossible to read him without continuous admiration for his cleverness, or to forget, while reading him, that poetry cannot be clever. While Crashaw, with two instinctively singing lines, lets us overhear that he is a poet, Pope brilliantly convinces us of everything that he chooses, except of that one fact. The only moments [272] when he trespasses into beauty are the moments when he mocks its affectations; so that
"Die of a rose in aromatic pain"
remains his homage, unintentional under its irony, to that "principle of beauty in all things" which he had never seen.
Mr. Courthope seels to be under a delusion as to the function of metre. He quotes from Marlowe:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topless towers of Ilium?"
and tells us that: "it is certain that he could only have ventured on the sublime audacity of saying that a face launched ships and burned towers by escaping from the limits of ordinary language, and conveying his metaphor through the harmonious and ecstatic movements of rhythm and metre". Now, on the contrary, any writer of elevated prose, Milton or Ruskin, could have said precisely what Marlowe said in prose, and made fine prose of it; the imagination, the idea, a fine kind of form, would have been there; only one thing would have been lacking, the very finest kind of form, the form of verse. It would have been poetical substance, not poetry; the rhythm transforms it into poetry, and nothing but the rhythm.
Poetry is first of all an art, and, in art, there must be a complete marriage or interpenetration of substance and form. The writer like Walt Whitman, who seems to contain so much material for poetry, which he can never shape into anything tangibly perfect, is not less disqualified from the name of poet than a writer like Pope, who has the most exquisite control over an unpoetical kind of form which exactly fits an unpoetical kind of substance. Crashaw, who had poetical substance of a particular kind, with only an intermittent power over it, remains a genuine but imperfect poet, whom we must sift with discrimination. Milton, who has almost every quality of form, and many of the finest qualities of substance, becomes the great poet who he is universally admitted to be, because he is almost always successful in the fusion of substance and form.
It is only after this intimate union has been consummated that we can begin to consider relative qualities of merit. The writer of one perfect song in one of the Elizabethan song-books is a poet, but, if he have written no more, or no more of such merit, he will remain a small, a limited poet. Pollok's "Course of Time" may be as long as "Paradise Lost", but Pollok does not enter into the competition. In distinguishing between poet and poet, in the somewhat fruitless task of assigning places, Mr. Courthope's rules, among others, come fairly into use. They are useless in distinguishing what is poetry from what is not poetry, and they would be useless in the presence of any new writer claiming to be a poet.
It is less difficult to be just to Virgil and Milton than to be just to M. Rostand or to Mr. Stephen Phillips. Nor will the mere testing of Mr. Phillips or M. Rostand by Milton or by Virgil avail to keep the critic to the truth. Every new force has its own novel form of beauty, and if our latest poet is not essentially different from his predecessors, no amount of affinity to them will save him. It is profoundly important, as Mr. Courthope asserts, to examine and to keep in mind "the works of poets who have been acknowledged, semper, ubique, ab omnibus, to be the living poets of the world"; but it is not less important to be on the watch for every stirring of new life, whether or not our reading has prepared us for it, in the form in which we find it.
Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
The Saturday Review.
Bd. 92, 1901, 31. August, S. 271-272.
Ungezeichnet.
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
The Saturday Review online
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009471062
URL: https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/calendar/newspaper/bsbmult00000691
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/716854-8
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Beckson, Karl u.a.: Arthur Symons.
A Bibliography.
Greensboro, NC: ELT Press 1990.
Symons, Arthur: Days and Nights.
London: Macmillan and Co. and New York 1889.
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924013557099
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015065540141
Symons, Arthur: Silhouettes.
London: Matthews & Lane 1892.
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31175004094424
S. 13: Pastel.
Symons, Arthur: Paul Verlaine.
In: The National Review.
Bd. 19, 1892, Nr. 112, Juni, S. 501-515.
URL: https://archive.org/details/nationalreview1918unse
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006061855
Symons, Arthur: Mr. Henley's Poetry.
In: The Fortnightly Review.
1892, August, S. 182-192.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008882609
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006056638
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/715786-1
URL: https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php
Symons, Arthur:
The Decadent Movement in Literature.
In: Harper's New Monthly Magazine.
Bd. 87, 1893, Nr. 522, November, S. 858-867.
URL: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=harpers
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008919716
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008882057
URL: https://www.unz.com/print/Harpers
Symons, Arthur: Paul Verlaine.
In: The New Review.
1893, Dezember, S. 609-617.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007916511
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000060795
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008884955
Symons, Arthur: London Nights.
London: Smithers 1895.
URL: https://archive.org/details/londonnights00symogoog
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3576649
Symons, Arthur: Silhouettes.
Second edition. Revised and enlarged.
London: Smithers; New York: Richmond 1896.
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924013557172
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.32044086852514
Symons, Arthur: Studies in Two Literatures.
London: Smithers 1897.
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924013257666
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/hvd.hxv997
Symons, Arthur: Mallarmé's "Divagations".
In: The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art.
Bd. 83, 1897, 30. Januar, S. 109-110.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009471062
URL: https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/calendar/newspaper/bsbmult00000691
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/716854-8
Symons, Arthur: Le mysticisme de Maeterlinck.
In: La Revue des Revues.
Bd. 22, 1897, 15. September, S. 531-536.
URL: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb344304308/date
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100330880IA
Symons, Arthur:
Stéphane Mallarmé
In: The Fortnightly Review.
1898, November, S. 677-685.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008882609
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006056638
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/715786-1
URL: https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php
Symons, Arthur: The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
London: Heinemann 1899.
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924027213994
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo1.ark:/13960/t3dz0th4k
URL: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k82456t
Symons, Arthur: Jules Laforgue.
In: Ders., The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
London: Heinemann 1899, S. 105-114.
URL: https://archive.org/details/cu31924027213994
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo1.ark:/13960/t3dz0th4k
URL: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k82456t
Symons, Arthur: Mr. Yeats as a Lyric Poet.
In: The Saturday Review.
Bd. 87, 6. Mai 1899, S. 553-554.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009471062
URL: https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/calendar/newspaper/bsbmult00000691
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/716854-8
Symons, Arthur: A Book of French Verse.
In: Literature. An International Gazette of Criticism.
1899, 10. November, S. 413-414.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/012173307
Symons, Arthur: Ernest Dowson.
In: The Fortnightly Review.
1900, Juni, S. 947-957.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008882609
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006056638
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/715786-1
URL: https://archive.org/advancedsearch.php
Symons, Arthur: What is Poetry?.
In: The Saturday Review.
Bd. 92, 31. August 1901, S. 271-272.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009471062
URL: https://digipress.digitale-sammlungen.de/calendar/newspaper/bsbmult00000691
URL: http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/716854-8
Symons, Arthur: Poems.
Bd. 1. New York: John Lane 1902.
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000000667487
Symons, Arthur: Poems.
Bd. 2. New York: John Lane 1902.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006059461
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.31175016742739
Symons, Arthur: Lyrics.
Portland, Me.: Mosher 1903.
PURL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008973059
Symons, Arthur: Studies in Prose and Verse.
London: Dent; New York: Dutton o.J. [1904].
URL: https://archive.org/details/studiesinprosevesymo00symo
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001775310
Symons, Arthur (Hrsg.): The Poems of Ernest Dowson.
With a Memoir by Arthur Symons,
Four Illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley and a Portrait by William Rothenstein.
London u. New York: Lane 1905.
URL: https://archive.org/details/poemsernestdows00symogoog
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001775310
Symons, Arthur: Qu'est-ce que la Poésie?
In: Vers et prose.
Bd. 3, 1905, September-November, S. 29-33.
URL: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb34505309x/date
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000642668
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008745696
Symons, Arthur: Studies in Seven Arts.
London: Constable 1906.
URL: https://archive.org/details/studiesinsevenar00symouoft
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015002727173 [New York 1906]
Symons, Arthur: Aspects of Verlaine.
In: The Smart Set. A Magazine of Cleverness.
Bd. 18, 1906, Nr. 1, Januar, S. 79-83.
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008881616
Symons, Arthur: London. A Book of Aspects.
London: Privately printed 1909.
URL: https://archive.org/details/londonbookofaspe00symo
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/umn.31951002063232p
Symons, Arthur: Plays, Acting and Music. A Book of Theory.
London: Dutton & Company 1909.
URL: https://archive.org/details/playsactingmusic00symo
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015029506477
Symons, Arthur: Art. Goncourt, DE.
In: The Encyclopædia Britannica. Eleventh Edition.
Volume XII. Cambridge, England; New York 1911, S. 231.
URL: https://archive.org/details/encyclopaediabrit12chisrich
Symons, Arthur: Art. Mallarmé, Stéphane.
In: The Encyclopædia Britannica. Eleventh Edition.
Volume XVII. Cambridge, England; New York 1911, S. 490.
URL: https://archive.org/details/encyclopaediabri17chisrich
Symons, Arthur: Art. Verlaine, Paul.
In: The Encyclopædia Britannica. Eleventh Edition.
Volume XXVII. Cambridge, England; New York 1911, S. 1023-1024.
URL: https://archive.org/details/encyclopaediabri27chisrich
Symons, Arthur: Figures of Several Centuries.
London: Constable and Company 1916.
URL: https://archive.org/details/figuresofseveral00symouoft
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b5047151 [New York o.J. (1916)]
Symons, Arthur: Colour Studies in Paris.
New York: Dutton & Company 1918.
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t09w0c09f
URL: https://archive.org/details/colourstudiesinp01symo
Symons, Arthur: Claude Debussy.
In: The Egoist.
Bd. 5, 1918:
Nr. 6, Juni-Juli, S. 82-83;
Nr. 7, August, S. 93-94.
URL: https://modjourn.org/journal/egoist/
URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000529711
Symons, Arthur: The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
Revised and enlarged edition.
New York: Dutton & Company 1919.
URL: https://archive.org/details/symbolistmovemen00symo
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/osu.32435074352998
Symons, Arthur: Letters to W. B. Yeats, 1892-1902.
Edited by Bruce Morris.
Edinburgh: The Tragara Press 1989.
Symons, Arthur: Selected Letters, 1880-1935.
Edited by Karl Beckson and John M. Munro.
Basingstoke: Macmillan 1989.
Symons, Arthur: Selected Writings.
Edited with an introduction by Roger Holdsworth.
Manchester: Fyfield Books 2003.
Symons, Arthur: The Symbolist Movement in Literature.
Edited by Matthew Creasy.
Manchester: Carcanet 2014.
Duclos, Michèle: Un regard anglais sur le symbolisme français.
Arthur Symons, Le mouvement symboliste en littérature (1899),
généalogie, traduction, influence.
Paris: L'Harmattan 2016.
Symons, Arthur: Selected Early Poems.
Edited with an introduction and notes by Jane Desmarais and Chris Baldick.
Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association 2017.
Symons, Arthur: Spiritual Adventures.
Edited with an introduction and notes by Nicholas Freeman.
Cambridge: Modern Humanities Research Association 2017.
Palacio, Jean de (Hrsg.): Trois essais sur la décadence.
Charles Morice, Arthur Symons, Hermann Bahr.
Textes traduits et présentés par Jean de Palacio.
Tusson: Du Lérot 2020.
Literatur: Symons
Bizzotto, Elisa / Evangelista, Stefano-Maria (Hrsg.):
Arthur Symons. Poet, Critic, Vagabond.
Cambridge 2018.
Boyiopoulos, Kostas: The Decadent Image.
The Poetry of Wilde, Symons and Dowson.
Edinburgh 2015.
Boyiopoulos, Kostas: ‘Modernistic Shone the Lamplight’.
Arthur Symons among the Moderns.
In: Literary and Cultural Alternatives to Modernism.
Hrsg. von Kostas Boyiopoulos u.a.
New York u. London 2019, S. 101-117.
Ducrey, Guy: Le passeur du symbolisme français, Arthur Symons.
In: 'Curious about France'.
Visions littéraires victoriennes.
Hrsg. von Ignacio Ramos Gay.
Bern u.a. 2015, S. 137-152.
Fox, C. Jay / Stern, Carol S. / Means, Robert S.:
Arthur Symons, Critic Among Critics: An Annotated Bibliography.
Greensboro, NC 2007.
Higgins, Jennifer: English Responses to French Poetry 1880-1940.
Translation and Mediation.
Leeds 2011.
Jauß, Hans R.: Ursprünge der Naturfeindschaft in der Ästhetik der Moderne.
In: Romantik: Aufbruch zur Moderne.
Hrsg. von Karl Maurer u.a. München 1991 (= Romanistisches Kolloquium, 5), S. 357-382.
Thain, Marion: Lyric Poem and Aestheticism. Forms of Modernity.
Edinburgh 2016.
Warner, Eric / Hough, Graham (Hrsg.): Strangeness and Beauty.
An Anthology of Aesthetic Criticism 1840–1910.
2 Bde. Cambridge u.a. 2009.
Zipfel, Frank: Das Paradox der Poesie.
(Un)Definierbarkeit der Gattung Lyrik.
Eine komparatistische Betrachtung.
In: Lyrik der Welt – Welt der Lyrik.
Lyrik und Lyrikforschung aus komparatistischer Perspektive.
Hrsg. von Frank Zipfel u.a.
Berlin 2022, S. 275-299.
Zymner, Rüdiger (Hrsg.): Handbuch Gattungstheorie.
Stuttgart u. Weimar 2010.
Literatur: The Saturday Review
Brake, Laurel / Demoor, Marysa (Hrsg.): Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism in Great Britain and Ireland.
Gent u. London 2009.
Craig, Hugh / Antonia, Alexis: Six Authors and the Saturday Review:
A Quantitative Approach to Style.
In: Victorian Periodicals Review 48.1 (2015), S. 67-86.
Creasy, Matthew 'The Neglected, the Unutterable Verlaine':
Arthur Symons, the Saturday Review, and French Literature in the 1890s.
In: Victorian Periodicals Review 52.1 (2019), S. 103-123.
King, Andrew u.a. (Hrsg.): The Routledge Handbook
to Nineteenth-Century British Periodicals and Newspapers.
London u. New York 2019.
Shattock, Joanne (Hrsg.):
Journalism and the Periodical Press in Nineteenth-Century Britain.
Cambridge 2019.
Edition
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