POETRY:

THE UNCERTAINTY OF ITS APPRECIATION.

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BY JOSEPH EVANS SNODGRASS.

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There is nothing more uncertain than the nature of the reception a Poet’s productions, and particularly his shortest pieces, are destined to meet. Especially is this true with respect to the more egotistical sort of versifications—such as sonnets, and the like—in which one’s own feelings find vent in verses penned, perhaps, for an album, or intended for the perusal of the immediate circle in which the writer moves. Now, the appreciation of sentiments thus embodied, when they come to be volume-ized, depends entirely upon the mood of mind in which they find the reader. Such is, indeed, the case with personal thoughts, even when they appear amid the popular literature of the day—but is more strikingly so under the circumstances named. If a sonnet, for example, which has been addressed to some real or fancied idol of the heart, falls into the hands of one who is under the influence of the tender passion, it is sure to be fully appreciated, and pronounced “beautiful.” To such an one, nothing is too sentimental.^[5] Anything which tells of the “trials of the heart”—of “true love”—of a “broken heart”—is doubly welcome. If it have a sprinkle of star-and-moon-sentiment about it, all the better. But place a piece of poetry headed, “Sonnet to the Moon,” or “To Mary,” before a heartless old bachelor, or an unsentimental matron, and the exclamation would be—“what nonsense—what stuff!”

But it is not only in the case of the love-struck, and the sans-love portions of the community, that the uncertainty named is made manifest, by any means. The most thoughtful and dignified productions may be the recipients of censure, for want of a kindredness of sentimentality—or absence of it—on the part of the reader. The mind may be totally unfitted for the thoughts before it, by very conformation,—or what is the same thing in effect—from habit. And, then again, the mind of the most sentimental order by nature, may be placed under unfavorable circumstances to appreciate the thoughts of the poet. So much so, that the most beautiful creations of the most fanciful author, may be as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, though clothed in most harmonious numbers. How, for instance, may we expect the merchant or mechanic, wearied with the toils of the day, to peruse a poem, however short, with the same pleasure and favorable reception as the man of leisure? The thing is among the impossibles. But even the man of taste and leisure, may fail (nay, often does,) to enter into the feelings of the writer—and without feeling the appreciation and penning of poetry, are, alike, out of the question—unless we except some of the poetry of Pope and others, which has left the ordinary track. It is so exceedingly difficult to catch the nice shades of meaning which it is intended to express, unless assisted by the heart. Poetical allusions especially, are always liable to be mistaken, if not scanned with a poetic eye.

But it is the change of circumstances which often, more than aught else, prevents the comprehension and appreciation of a poet’s thoughts—his descriptive thoughts particularly. As much as descriptive poetry resembles painting, it comes far short of the power which the latter art exerts in representing scenes as a whole. Take a pastoral poem, by way of making my meaning understood. A poet would describe the parts and personages separately—such as the wood,—the stream,—the flocks, and the pastoral lovers—but the painter can present them all at once, as a single idea, so to speak. How difficult, then, must it be for an author so to describe scenes, the like of which the reader may never have beheld, as to be fully appreciated by all. If he is sketching,—as did Thompson,—the customs and scenes of rural life, he will be understood fully by those alone who have enjoyed such scenes and practised such customs. Those who, in this case, had viewed the original, would be able best to decide upon the merits of the picture. A poet might rhyme forever about scenes which he had never looked upon, but he would utterly fail to satisfy one familiar with the same, that his portraitures were correct. So a reader, who had never viewed a river, or a waterfall, or a gloomy ravine amid rock-ribbed mountains, would scarcely be able fully to appreciate a description of the same. He might, indeed form an idea of the reality—but it would be only ideal after all. I have often thought of Byron’s exclamation in connection with the above train of reflections:

“Oh! there is sweetness in the mountain’s air,

Which bloated ease can never hope to share.”

He was probably among the hills of Portugal at the time, and, doubtless, felt what he wrote. I never realized the force of the thought as I did one summer morning, while seated in a piazza, a half mile or so from the North Mountain, in my native Virginia, with a beautiful, green and flowery meadow intervening. Just as I came to the stanza of “Childe Harold,” from which I have quoted, a delightful mountain-breeze swept over the plain. As it tossed my locks to and fro, and gamboled with the leaves of the volume before me, I felt indeed, that there was “sweetness in the mountain air.” Nothing could set forth that uncertainty of appreciation I have been dwelling upon, more clearly than such an incident. It is probable that the greatest city admirer of his lordship’s poetry, never noticed the full force of the idea which thus arrested my attention, but passed it unappreciated, in admiration of some sentiment, in the very same stanza, whose full import he could comprehend, while he entered into the feelings of the poetic traveller.

But the greatest difficulty with the “occasional” as well as shorter pieces of a volume of poems, is the difference between the circumstances under which they were severally penned, and those under which they are perused. One reads, in the self-same hour, the diversified productions of years. How, then, can a writer anticipate the appreciation of his sentiments? He has ceased to enter into his own peculiar, circumstance-generated emotions. How, therefore, may others take his views? To suppose an ability on the part of the critic, to do justice, then, to the earlier and less-studied morceaux, (or, as I have styled them above, the egotistical pieces of an author,) would be to suppose an utter impossibility—a sort of critical ubiquity. Coleridge felt the truth of what I have advanced,—as any one may learn from the preface of his “Juvenile Poems.” He therein expresses his apprehensions in the following language:—“I shall only add, that each of my readers will, I hope, remember that these poems, on various subjects, which he reads at one time, and under the influence of one set of feelings, were written at different times, and prompted by very different feelings; and, therefore, the inferiority of one poem to another, may, sometimes, be owing to the temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it.”

What shall we say, then? Shall an author abstain from publishing his shorter and occasional pieces, on account of the facts alluded to by Coleridge? By no means, I would say, though a consideration thereof may well deter the judicious writer from admitting into his volume every thing he may have penned. As to the dimensions of pieces, it may be more advisable, in some cases, to republish the shortest sonnets, and the like, relating to one’s own personal feelings and relations, than longer productions—at least they are likely to be more pleasing to the general reader. They are unquestionably useful, as throwing light upon points of a man’s private history with a force of illumination which no biographer could use, were he to attempt it—a something, by-the-bye, which seldom happens; indicating the probability, that we seldom read the man’s real biography, but merely a man’s—often an ideal man only.

As to the effect of fugitive and earlier poems, when republished, upon an author’s reputation—let them be appreciated or not, it matters little. His fame does not hang upon such “slender threads.” It is to his more elaborate productions that the public will look for evidences of genius. It is a fact that a poet’s reputation, generally speaking, depends upon the appreciation of some particular production. It is true, readers may differ in their assignment of merit—but the fact of non-agreement, as to the question of comparative merit, does not alter the principle. If each one comes to the conclusion that the poet has penned one poem of prime excellence, his name is safe—the residue are set down not as evidences of a want of genius, but of the neglect of a right and careful use of it. The conclusion is, in other words, that he could have written the others better, if he had made proper use of the talents with which he was endowed. Were an example needed, I might refer to Milton. When we think of him we never associate with his name any of his productions but “Paradise Lost.” He might have published in the same volume thousands of fugitive pieces, no better than those he did suffer to see the light, (and they are with few exceptions, poor enough, as the emanations of such a mind,) and yet his fame not suffer in the smallest degree—the names of Milton, and of that great poem, would still have descended as one and inseparable.