A Young American Poet

Richard Aldington

It is the defect of English, and in a lesser degree of American, criticism that such criticisms as are not merely commercial are doctrinaire. The critic, that is to say, comes to judge a work of art not with an open mind but with a whole horde of prejudices, ignorances, and eruditions which he terms “critical standards.” “A work of art,” you can hear him say, “must be this, must be that, must be the other,” when indeed a work of art may well be no such thing. Just now the cry is all for “modernity,” for lyrical outbursts in praise of machinery, of locomotion, and of violence. And the “critics” obediently fill their minds with these prejudices until at length you discover them solemnly declaring that a work of art has no value except it treat of machinery, of locomotion or of kindred subjects! I have yet to find the critic who approaches his job in the right spirit; who asks himself first, What has the artist attempted to do?, and then, Has he succeeded? The commercial critic is of course the more reprehensible; the doctrinaire critic is nevertheless a serious menace to that liberty of the arts of which one cannot be too jealous. In England especially the doctrinaire critic reigns. Yesterday it was all Nietzsche; then Bergson; now there is a wild fight between a dozen “isms,” combats between traditional imbeciles and revolutionary imbeciles. So that one spends half one’s time becoming an “ist” and the rest of the time in getting rid of the title.

The neglect of the poems of the young American poet—H. D.—who is the subject of this article, is due, I think to the following facts. The author, who apparently possesses a great degree of self-criticism, produces a very small bulk of work and most of it is lost in magazines; such work as attained publicity was judged, before being read, from its surroundings; the work being original, seemed obscure and wantonly destructive of classic English models (you must remember that there are very, very few people in England who have the faintest idea of what is meant by vers libre); the use of initials rather frightened people; and the author had no friends among the professional critics.

Now America has this advantage over most European countries that its inhabitants are mostly willing to accept a fresh view of things. The lack of a “tradition” has advantages as well as disadvantages. An American author, then, is less likely to see things in a conventional way, and is less likely to be deterred from any novel and personal method of expression. (For in 1911, when H. D. began to write the poems I am considering, vers libre was practically unheard of outside France.)

If I were asked to define the chief quality of H. D.’s work I should say: “I can only explain it by a paradox; it is a kind of accurate mystery.” And I should go on to quote the ballad of Sir Patric Spens in which from a cloudy, vague, obscure atmosphere, where nothing is precise, where there is no “story,” no obvious relation between the ideas, certain objects stand out very sharply and clearly with a very keen effect, objects like “the bluid-red wine,” “the braid letter,” the young moon in the old moon’s arms, and the ladies with “their fans intil their hands.” And then I should go on to say that this “accurate mystery” came from the author’s brooding over—not locomotives and machinery—but little corners of gardens, a bit of a stream in some Pennsylvanian meadow, from memories of afternoons along the New Jersey coast, or of a bowl of flowers. Curious, mysterious, rather obscure sort of broodings with startling and very accurate renderings of detail. And then I should explain the author’s use of Hellenic terms and of the rough unaccented metres of Attic choruses and Melic lyrics—like those fragments of Alcaeus and Ibycus and Erinna—by pointing out that it is in those poems—the choruses in the Bacchae, for example—that this particular kind of brooding over nature found its best expression.

Let me quote a portion of a poem to illustrate these qualities: the quality which I have called “accurate mystery,” the quality of brooding over nature and the quality of spontaneous kinship with certain aspects of Hellenic poetry. I take it that, if one liked to be specifically modern the poem could be called “Wind on the New Jersey Coast.” But the author’s innate sense of mystery, of aloofness, just like that of the anonymous author of Sir Patric Spens, makes her place the action in some vague, distant place and time. Though it be contrary to current opinion I hold that the poem gains by this.

HERMES OF THE WAYS

I am not willing to have that poem read quickly and cursorarily, as one reads a column of newspaper print. It must be read with some of the close, intense attention with which it was written. Each word and phrase were most carefully considered and arranged. The reader must remember that the object of such writing is not to convey information but to create in the reader a mood, an emotion, a sense of atmosphere. Mr. Yeats is right when he complains that newspapers have spoiled our sense of poetry; we expect poetry to tell us some piece of news, and indeed poetry has no news to tell anyone. Its object is simply to arouse an emotion, and no emotion is ever aroused in a person who skims through a piece of poetry as he skims through a journal.

When I read that poem I have evoked in me a picture—like a picture of Courbet or Boudin—of a white sea roaring on to yellow sands under a bright sky, with the wind sweeping and whistling in the dunes. And I have a feeling that it is a magic sort of picture, of somewhere a great way off, where it would not surprise me to find the image of a god at the cross-roads, with the offerings of simple people about the pedestal. And at the same time I always remember bathing from some sand-dunes near Rye, in Sussex, on a very windy afternoon, when the sand blinded me and the sharp grass cut my ankles as I ran down to the water.

I cannot, of course, tell what sort of an effect such writing has on other people. It may be that I am especially sensitive to it. But let me quote another of the author’s poems, conveying a totally different mood.

SITALKAS

If you ask me to say precisely what that “means” I could only explain it in this way. When I read that poem I experience the emotions I should expect to receive if I were lying in a sunny meadow on some hot late September afternoon—somewhere far inland, where there would be a great silence broken very gently by the rustle of the heavy headed grass and by the stir of falling beech leaves—somewhere so far inland, somewhere so hot, that it would come as a shock of delighted surprise to think of a “cool god in a chamber under Lycia’s far coast.” It does not annoy me that I have never been to Lycia, that I have no more idea who Sitalkas and Argestes were than who Sir Patric Spens was; it is all one; I get my impression just the same, which, I take it, is what the author aimed at. And indeed the odd unknown names give it a very agreeable sense of mystery and of aloofness.

Such are some of the qualities of the work of the young American who hides her identity under the initials H. D. I believe her work is quite unknown in America, though, before the war, I remember seeing some comment on it in a French literary paper. It was in another French review that a critic complained that this author was not interested in aeroplanes and factory chimneys. Somehow I feel quite coldly about factory chimneys when I read sudden intense outbursts of poetry like those I have quoted and like this: