Savitri

    IX

'A Triple Challenge'

      Three such poems as the Cantos, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel and Savitri are certainly a triple challenge to those who hold the view that the days of the long poem are gone. The Cantos, now numbering 109, probably make a bulk of nearly 800 pages; in the standard edition, Savitri too takes up 814 pages; and The Odyssey, with its 33,333 lines, is surely the longest and the most formidable (in mass) of the three. About thirty-five years ago a writer remarked in the course of a review, "It is possible that a long poem cannot be achieved out of the modern consciousness...but the question will continue to be mooted while poetry is a living art."⁷⁹

      Louis O. Coxe, who thinks that Kazantzakis' poem is wholly misconceived, fears that its failure to present "any unifying worldview" and its general miscarriage "may well be taken as proof that a long poem is no longer possible", but he also adds: "I cannot share any such notion. It proves only that the romantic approach to a long poem is not workable."⁸⁰ And T.S. Eliot says, though in an entirely different connection: "I by no means believe that the 'long poem' is a thing of the past; but at least there must be more in it for the length than our grandparents seemed to demand; and for us, anything that can be said as well in prose can be said better in prose. And a great deal, in the way of meaning, belongs to prose rather than to poetry."⁸¹ It is true many long poems have been failures; and ambitious poems like Alfred Noyes' The Torchbearers, a sort of verse history of science, and even such a new species of poem like Bridges'

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The Testament of Beauty, although it is impressive in theme as well as technique, have not hit the bull's-eye like The Waste Land, a much smaller poem that may almost be described as a modern epic in miniature.

      But all this doesn't prove that a long poem, a modern epic, is impossible. The modern consciousness and an epic creation need not be a contradiction in terms; the reign of prose need not invalidate the parallel, or more sovereign, reign of poetry. What shall we look for in a long poem, a long poem that is an epic creation, a long poem that deserves to be acclaimed also a great poem? It is pertinent to cite in this connection the views of Abercrombie:

When poetry is called great, it is not only on account of the

range of its matter, though that is important: for we could not

call poetry great which did not face the whole fact of man's life

in this world, its wickedness and misery as well as its nobility

and joy. But its greatness also consists in the organisation of

its matter—and that, remember, is the evil as well as the good

of life—into some consistent shapeliness or coherent unity of

final impression; so that, whatever means have been taken to

effect it, we have at last the sense of belonging to a life in which

everything is related to everything else, in which nothing can

intrude by chance, but all is required, even the evil is required,

in the interest of the whole: nothing can there occur which does

not belong to, and assist into being, one inclusive, harmonious

orderliness of existence.⁸²

Qualitatively a drop of milk is the same thing as a cup of milk or even the ksīra sāgara, the ocean of milk; yet quantity, when quality is not divorced from it, is not to be ignored or despised. While a lyric and an epic are equally poetry, the latter is characterised by greater extension in space and time, greater comprehension, and hence greater universality of appeal. When the house is small, there is little elbow room, and there is bound to be a feeling of confinement. Intensity alone is not enough. By making room for characters and

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actions on a national, global or cosmic scale, the epic opens to us vast horizons of meaning and significance.

      On the other hand, the immense chambers of the epic, its corridors, its stairways, its august approaches, its impressive backgrounds, also need to be made the stage of a vitally important drama of permanent human significance. The epic's is an all inclusive world: men, gods, demons, dreams, nightmares, ideas, all is assimilable epic 'material', all could be transformed into poetry. Neither mysticism nor philosophy, neither prophecy nor debate, need be excluded; only, they have to be processed into poetry. The view that maintains that content is of no consequence and the opposite view that content is everything alike miss the true nature of poetry.

      Basil Willey is right when he says that, "so many Ph.D. theses go wrong...by treating a poet's 'thought' as if it were something which could be detached from the poetry, and discussed as part of the history of philosophy or ethics...If this nut were the only thing that mattered, the poet would have saved endless trouble by handing it to us in plain prose, like a man and a philosopher, instead of padding it round with a lot of obscure rhetoric."⁸³ But G. Wilson Knight is no less right when, while assessing the poetry of Pope, he studies "the total contents, as opposed to the style in isolation".⁸⁴ Elsewhere Wilson Knight writes: "Poetic language is an incarnation, not a transcription of thought: it is a seizing on truth beyond the writer's personal thinking through submission to the object."⁸⁵ Poetry, to beg the question, charges rhythmic language with a certain power and glory that it thereby becomes, in LA. Richards' words, "the completest mode of utterance".⁸⁶

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