the poetics of henry james

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The Poetics of Henry James

Author(s): Morton Dauwen ZabelReviewed work(s):Source: Poetry, Vol. 45, No. 5 (Feb., 1935), pp. 270-276Published by: Poetry FoundationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20579801 .

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POETRY: a Magazine of Verse

COMMENTTHE POETICS OF HENRY JAMES

A PURPOSE and an achievementikeHenry James's

are lost on no department of writing, not even one

with which he has as little practical concern as poetry. The

latest revival of interest in him, having now warranted the

firstcollection of his critical prefaces to his own books under

the title The Art of the Novel (Chas. Scribner's Sons),

must include the attention of contemporary poets. What

he did to prepare the day for them in England and Amer

ica, and what, indirectly, he saw their problem to be, is an

importantart of our literary ntelligence.His prefaces

are the document inwhich it ismost comprehensively stated;Mr. Blackmur's ccount f their efinitionsnd doctrinessan excellent foreword towhat will in time doubtless be rec

ognized as an authentic poetics not only for novelists but

for other literary craftsmen in the Twentieth Century. It

has already been recognized as such in several quarters since

James's death in 1917. The memorial issue of The Little

Review (August, 1918) was an early testimony;ound'sprogram notes to the novels printed there now reappear in

his latest collection of essays,Make It New (Faber & Faber,

London), and establish heconnectionithmodern poetrywhich was already apparent inEliot's early verse; the studies

of F. M. Ford, Pelham Edgar, J.W. Beach, and Percy

Lubbock have lent the scrutiny of more formal analysis; and

The Hound and Horn last April offered a critical retrospect

of thirteen aspects of James's art and age.

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The Poetics of Henry fames

In a time when most literary forms tend to become ab

sorbed into that loose and amorphous species called the

"novel,"James's rinciples ust have at least thenegative

value of tellingwhat the novel is not: what is inappropriate,unspecific, or unnatural to it, and how its special character

and function ust bemaintained; thuskeeping oets fromreckless ntry n its preserves nd consequent amage totheir own. But he has a more positive value for them.He

saw, from the vantage-point of a lifetime's discipline and

responsibility,he disintegratingnd cheapening endenciesatwork in the entire body of literature; he was able by the

clairvoyancef a resolutertist's nflinchingntelligenceo

see that thesetendencies,t thebeginning f this entury,were entering n theirmost productive nd ruinous hase.At an advanced age he sat down to write his prefaces as

a sortof plea forCriticism,forDiscrimination,forAppreciation onother than infantile lines-as against the so almost universal AngloSaxon absence of these things; which tends so, in our general trade,it seems to me, to break the heart. . . . They ought, collected together, none the less, to form a sort of comprehensive manual or'vademecum oraspirants in our arduous profession.

They were to stand, in other words, as a warning against

license and as a guide through the deceptive privileges of a

free age for authorship. That guidance toucheson thecontemporary poetic problem at four important points: themotives

of technique, henatureof artistic ntelligence,hedutyofself-determination, and the character of modernity. All of

them have been paramount in literature during the past half

century,made so by the decline of romantic principles and

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POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

the resistancef creative ntegrityo theconfusion hichthose rinciplesnduced.And it isworthnotingthatthecorrective which James formulated for his branch of litera

ture, fiction,was, when he wrote the prefaces in 1907-9,

fully as imperative among poets as among the generation of

novelists fromwhom he now towers as an exemplar and

standard.That generation,nEngland andAmericabetween 880

and theWar, was the enthusiastic inheritor of naturalism.

The zest for experience had not yet been curbed by the ter

rors or the surfeit of realism; the feast of detail had not yet

been restrictedy thecautions f selective aste nd form.

France, the ountry fJames's piritualffinitynd apprenticeship, had furnished both-the discipline of fact in Zola

and theGoncourts, the rigor of design in Flaubert. Eng

land had to wait several decades for a similar correction.

When Pater, Moore, Gissing, and Butler appeared, their

value was disregarded or denounced, and in America the

day for a Henry Adams or Stephen Crane had not yet been

prepared. The newgeneration f story-tellersere chieflyproductsof a higher journalism-Wells, Bennett,Galsworthy, reiser-rescued for eriods y the

finer onscienceof theirmaterial but descending too readily to tract-writing

or themanufacture of best-sellers. James viewed this hazard

ous interval in the novel with distress; his opinions may still

be readinNotes onNovelists. lie sawTwentieth enturynovelists as declining from a great tradition, as standing in a

precarious position where they no longer commanded the

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The Poetics of Henry James

vigor f that radition'sarlynovelty, ut stilltoo immaturein critical acumen to find in true perception or formalma

turity he ntidote hatmightrescue hem rom he sickness

of popularity." He was aware that this interval had bredcertainmasters; his praise of Conrad shows that he saw how

a dangerous transition might be bridged. But he was also

aware thatbetween hedeteriorationf romanticentiment(in Stevenson) and of realism (in Reade, Wells, and 'Wal

pole), there survived ne certainmediator-the provingdiscipline of technique. He was particularly aware of this

because he himself had been rescued by such an austerity,

patientlymastered through forty years ofwork. He, in his

earlier generation, had been obliged to pass from the exuberantfertilityf pioneer xperiencesinRoderick udson,Confidence, The American) to the gradual mastery of a

critical authority which would allow him to control not

only the abundant novelties of the American scene but the

larger prospects of a European heritage. For him the age of

discovery was past, but the age of values had just begun.

The copious mnisciencehichhad descended rom ickens,Melville, andTolstoy, nd inpoetry rom ugo,Whitman,and Swinburne, disclosed to him its perils as well as its

privileges.For novelists ise enoughto care,his career san artist from 1875 to 1910 provided the best possible ex

ample of how this danger might be resisted. From that re

sistancehe derivedthe increasinglyefinednd subtilizedstylewhich has been, formost readers, James's chief claim

todistinction. he poetsofEnglish-speakingountries ad

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no similar model of discipline; they had to turn to France.

The age that was dominated byWhitman was one of in

ventivefertilitynd exploration,ut not of discrimination;James's influence in the field of fiction anticipates by a

quarter-centuryhe ffortsoward imitationnd concretionwhich have been paramount in poetic theory and writing

since theWar.

But James'sfamous tylisticubtletynd refinementavemore to justify them than their aim to perfect the instrument

of language. They are indissociable from his conception of

the rtist's ntelligence. he omniscience owhichmodernwriters lay claim was to him not a matter of scope but of

insight, ot of expansion ut of penetration. In thishedirectly pposesthedisciples fWhitman. His effort operfect his techniquewas not only, asMrs. Wharton has said,

an attempt to lift the novel out of its infantile delight in

block-buildingoan adultconcern or tructurendmanipulation; itwas his way of showing what the creative intelli

gence is and should be, and the objects to which it should be

applied. As Mr. Blackmur says:

Jameshad inhis styleand perhaps in the lifewhich it reflectedan idiosyncracyopowerful,so overweening, that tomany it seemed

a stultifying vice, or at least an inexcusable heresy. . . . He enjoyed an excess of intelligenceand he suffered, oth in life andart, from n excessive effort ocommunicate t, to represent t in allits fullness. His stylegrew elaborate in the degree that he rendered shades and refinementsfmeaning and feelingnot usuallyrendered at all. . . . His intention and all his labor was to representdramatically intelligence t itsmost difficult,tsmost lucid, itsmost beautifulpoint. This is the sum of his idiosyncrasy.

In other words, it ceased to be an idiosvncrasy and became

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The PoeticsofHenry James

a test of character and strength, a realization in the most

profound way of what an artist's special function in life is.

One might, with optimism, say that if James had been a

poet instead of a novelist his consummate sense of this artisticresponsibilityould not have been consideredmere idiosyncrasy; the poet's duty is not only "to charge language

with themaximum degree ofmeaning" but to extract that

meaning from heessential eartof the experience roundand within him. But the fate of the poets who have tried,

in any age, to do this has never been an easy one. In his

earlybook on FrenchPoets and NovelistsJames aw theirordeal in theNineteenth Century and anticipated it in the

Twentieth. He was able to criticize audelairewithoutoverlooking the fact that Baudelaire furnished a new moral

ity and purpose to poets in an age that promised to confound

and bewilderthem y the fecunditynd complexityf itsliteraryesources.

For James he alvation rom uch onfusionaypreciselyin that conquest of identitywhich he made the adventure of

his focalheroes ndheroines-MillyTheale, Maggie Verver,Lambert Strether.These people, iving ivesof emotional r socialconformity,mbody hemodernsensibility

surroundedy the xternal quipment fmodernsophistication; they comprehend at once the splendors of tradition,

the eightof inheritednstinctnddecorum, nd the icenseofcurrentiberalism.rom this onfusionfprivileges achhas to retreat, through ordeal and agony, to the final au

thority of selfhood. When that is attained, in triumph or

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in tragedy, the truth of life is at last disclosed. Their prob

lem, in different terms, is that of the modern poets who

havewritten, ut of lives f purer feelingr intellect,uch

poems s SundayMorning, The Man Who Died Twice,TheWaste Land, Hugh SelwynMoberley,and The Tower-the rescue f personalityromn excess f sophistication,erudition,elf-indulgence,nd privilege.The antagonismfthese orces sJames's efinitionf themodern problem; tcloselyresemblesalery's, though t differs idely in thesolution he offers. He saw this predicament as an antag

onism f intelligentelfhoodgainstthedepersonalizedcientific omprehensionf all things n their unprejudiced

identities."he labyrinth,orthewriter,permits nlyonesafe exploration-that guided by a man's complete and

realized personality, to which all data of experience must

attach to gain meaning. Such meaning it is the artist's spe

cial duty to interpret and express, and James defined the

poet as the artist who must express it with the highest au

thority.The "taste" of thepoet [a blessed comprehensivename formany

of the thingsdeepest in us] is, at bottomand so far as the poetin him prevails over everythingelse, his active sense of life: inaccordancewith which truth okeep one's hand on it is to hold the

silver clue to the whole labyrinth of his consciousness. . . . Theseer and speaker under the descent of the god is the "poet," what

ever his form, and he ceases to be one only when his form, what

ever else itmay nominallyor superficially r vulgarly be, is unworthy of thegod: in which event,we promptlysubmit,he isn'tworth talkingof at all.

Poets have seldom been honored, in any age, by as high a

duty and as certain a dignity as this. M. D. Z.

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the poetics of henry james

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