United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

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The Techique of Robert Frost and T. S. Elio t IRENE HODGSON HPHE present generation of poets has been very concerned with the problem of cap¬ turing in their poetry the spirit of their own times and of finding a form and idiom suited to the expression of that spirit. It is this problem that F. R. Leavis had in mind when he wrote in “Modern Bearings”: “Poetry matters be¬ cause of the mind of poet who is more alive than other people, more alive in his own age.” It is this attitude which has produced a reaction against the Victorians and the traditional Georgians because of their withdrawal from contemporary issues and their conventionality of form and subject matter. T. S. Eliot, as a poet and a critic, has been a leading figure in this revolt. He has been in¬ tensely aware of the problems of his genera¬ tion ... of what appears to him the decadence, the chaos and the futility of modern life. Out of his mental struggle has come a new type of poetry, startlingly original in technique, about which has evolved a storm of controversy. Robert Frost has said of this technique: “I like to read Eliot because it is fun seeing the way he does things; but I am always glad it is his way and not mine.” The two poets have little in common. Frost seems scarcely aware of the problems, of life and of poetic expres¬ sion, with which Eliot grapples. The contrast between the two poets brings to mind Thomas Hardy’s well-known little poem, ‘In Time of “the Breaking of Nations.” ’ In relative terms, Eliot is concerned with ‘war’s annals’ and the ‘passing of Dynasties,’ while Frost writes of the simple and enduring things, ‘a man har¬ rowing clods,’ ‘thin smoke without flame from the heaps of couch-grass’ and ‘a maid and her wight.’ Frost has treated these themes with¬ out any ostentatious effort to be ‘modern,’ yet, in his own way, he is as modern as Eliot. He is in agreement with the modern tend¬ ency to accept any subject, form or diction as capable of poetic treatment. However, he has not carried this practice to an extreme. In fact much of his poetry, especially his earlier work, is extremely conventional. “Rose Pogonias,” a poem in his first volume, is a good example of this aspect of Frost’s style. The first stanza will suffice: A saturated meadow, Sun-shaped and jewel-small, A circle scarcely wider Than the trees around were tall; Where winds were quite excluded, Aid the air was stifling sweet With the breath of many flowers— A temple of the heat. Most of his best work, however, is in easy blank verse. He has said that there are two rival factors in a poem—the inflexion demanded by the verse pattern and that demanded by the sense and that neither should be completely subjected to the other. In other words, the rhythm should follow a pattern but there is no need to condone variations. There is noth¬ ing very radical about this theory. Poets have always made use of it, although seldom allow¬ ing themselves the freedom which Frost does. His diction in his dialogues is that of the New Englanders whom he describes. Dialect is not used and yet the flavour of the speech is there—the impression of dialect is conveyed. Frost has succeeded in doing what Words¬ worth aimed at—using the speech of the com¬ mon people as a medium of poetic expression. His words are fresh, vivid, precise, carefully chosen. His own definition of poetry—“words that have become deeds”—reflects his attempt to find words that are active. He sought what he called “unmade words,” and tried to give them beauty and poetic significance. To make his meaning clearer, he has said of the word ‘alien,’ that since Keats wrote: “She stood in tears amid the alien corn,” no poet has a right to use that word except in connection with Ellis Island. 26

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Strether is a projection of the personality of Henry James. Furthermore, James does not make the people of whom he writes his own by present¬ ing them and coloring them from his particular point of view. They may exist in life, but they do not fire the imagination as does a Becky Sharp or a Tess Durbeyfield. There is not enough of their creator in them to constitute them a particular society. Brownell claims that James’s characters, taken together, form the least successful ele¬ ment of his fiction. This is partly because the author himself seems less interested in their personalities than in the situation in which he places them. They are not very vividly char¬ acterized, and are not completely presented as human beings. In fact, James gives a wide berth to “the province of the heart” and con¬ fines himself to a purely intellectual interest in his characters. And “a picture of human life without reference to the passions . . . cannot but be limited and defective.” Our acquaint¬ ance with his characters is of necessity partial and superficial. Some readers will share James’s delight in watching a purely intel¬ lectual process, but the majority are more read¬ ily interested through their sympathies. It is long before we learn definitely that Chad and Madame de Vi onnet are really in love; the phrase “a virtuous attachment” may mean any¬ thing or nothing. Jeanne de Vionnet is mar- mied in most summary fashion to a man of whom we have never even heard. Little Bil- ham promises to try to care for Mamie Pocock because Strether wishes it, and, in his own words, he “would do anything in the world for Strether.” At the end we are left uncertain as to whether or not Strether is in love with Maria Gastrey or she with him. All these things are merely incidental to the unfolding of the theme James wishes to convey. The personal struggle which supplies the dramatic element takes place too exclusively within the mind of Strether, so the inherent drama largely fails to get itself realized. The story, or rather the development of the theme, moves very slowly indeed. It is a pro¬ cess of slow enlightenment. James will never give us any more information than he feels we can quite digest at one time, and so he keeps our curiosity continually aroused. Long pas¬ sages of dialogue must be waded through for a kernel of new knowledge, which often is not conveyed in words at all, but in a gesture or the abrupt breaking off of a sentence. In “The Art of Fiction,” James says, “It is an incident for a woman to stand up with her hand resting on a table and look out at you in a certain way.” Consequently there is much in James’ dialogue that escapes us, and we are left with the im¬ pression that it is colorless and featureless. Certainly he takes no pains to make his char¬ acters witty or spectacular. “When they play their trump card,” says Beach, “it is not with a great smack down upon the table. They drop it rather out of their voluminous coat-sleeves and slip it on the green baize with discreet and apologetic gesture.” In the first place, James shows very little difference between his characters with regard to language and manner of speech. They all seem to be of approximately the same culture and intelligence. This makes it difficult to fol¬ low the process of thought through his dia¬ logues, which are typically very slow, with occasional bursts of rapid fire in the exchange of views. Between antagonists the dialogue unfolds like a game of chess in which each move must be studied with the most intense concentration. Between confederates the pro¬ cess is like the putting together of a picture- puzzle, each assisting the other by well-chosen words, gestures, inflections. James is fond of sprinkling his dialogue with expressions such as: “She wondered, seemed a little to doubt.” “She took it in then.” “She hesitated afresh, but she brought it out.” “She saw what he meant.” “He had sufficiently understood.” “They fronted each other, across the table, as if things unuttered were in the air.” Our knowledge of Chad, Madame de Vion¬ net, and even Maria Gastrey never goes very deep. Chad is measured only in terms of his improvement over the Chad of Woollett days. His manners are excellent—that is really all we see. Madame de Vionnet we accept as a woman with some peculiar individual charm which cannot be described to us save by the word “wonderful,” a word very much over¬ worked in the opinion of some readers, but it is strange what an impression James has been able to build up by its constant use. However, all the other characters are subordinate to (Continued on page 38) 28

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Frost’s imagery is vivid and arresting but there is no attempt to achieve by it the sensa¬ tional effect of Eliot’s: “When the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient ether¬ ized upon a table.” Frost’s sense for beauty as it is revealed in his imagery, relieves the rather dull texture of his poetry. One of the finest examples of his imagery is in “The Death of the Hired Man.” There is little colour in his imagery, but a fine sense of light and shadow and of form. His description is objective. There may be another meaning lurking underneath it, but it is never permitted to intrude upon his clean-cut, bright pictures of nature and of men and women. This objectivity combined with accurate observation are the characteristics of Frost’s realism. His realism is the kind that comes from an intimacy with the objects and experiences described. Describing his realism, Frost explained: “There are two types of real¬ ist—the one who offers a good deal of dirt with his potato to show that it is a real one and the one who is satisfied with the potato brushed clean. I’m inclined to be the second kind. To me the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.” He has succeeded in making his poetry as bare and compressed as the speech of his New England farmers. There is very little orna¬ mentation or padding. An even, quiet tone is ma intained through¬ out Frost’s poetry. There is no surging of emo¬ tion, no lyrical outbursts. Weirick writes of the “gray competence” of his style. Even the poems tending toward melodrama, for instance “Two Witches,” there is a matter-of-fact tone and an even pace. As one of his critics has said, his poetry does not sing, but the even, quiet measure and the deep undertones have a charm of their own.” Vernon Loggins con¬ siders that “his music is as pure as a Scotch folk melody.” Ludwig Lewisohn has evaluated Frost’s standing as a modern poet in these words: “Frost’s revolt against convention in both sub¬ stance and form may be called the classical revolt for it is the recurrently necessary return from artifice to expression, from accepted false¬ hoods to veracity, from fashions to nature.” T. S. Eliot’s revolt against convention has been much more thorough. In many respects, however, he has accepted traditional poetic technique or at the most, taken liberties with it which are no more radical than those of Frost. Much of his poetry is in stanza form, with rhyme and regular metric. Look, for example, at the last few lines of “Sweeney Among the Nightingales.” The nightingales are singing near The Convent of the Sacred Heart, And sang within the bloody wood When Agamemnon cried aloud, And let their liquid siftings fall To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud. Even his more irregular poetry has a music, a rhythm and a texture not too strange to ears accustomed to traditional English poetry. Con¬ sider, for instance, the solemn beauty of “Journey of the Magi.” Eliot’s theories about rhythm and rhyme do not markedly differ from those of Frost. He advocates freedom of rhythm within a pattern and the use of rhyme, “for a sudden tightening- up, for a cumulative insistence, or for an abrupt change of mood.” His diction is not startlingly modern in the sense that Sandburg’s is. It is, however, inclined to be too intellectual and too technical—he uses, for instance, one word which occupies a Whole line—but it is precise and compressed and attains at times an easy and natural conversational tone. He is capable of producing “a lovely and secret melancholy music,” to borrow a critic’s phrase. Eliot’s use of figures of speech is rather more radical. He has sought to introduce, by their use, an element of surprise into his poetry, to dislocate us from conventional relationships. The familiar: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons” and the passage, already quoted, about the ‘etherized patient,’ are typi¬ cal of Eliot’s technique. On the whole he has succeeded in his purpose. In my opinion this aspect of his style is one of the chief factors contributing to the freshness, vigour and fas¬ cination of his poetry. Commenting on the lines: “I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker. And I have seen the Eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, And, in short, I was afraid.” Charles Williams is of the opinion that these ex¬ pressions enrich the mind, even when not fully understood. Up to this point there seems nothing very unusual in Eliot’s technique—only the efforts of a poet seeking, as others have, to express 30