The Name & Nature of Poetry : by A.E Housman (1933), containing his Leslie Stephen Lecture given at Cambridge University.
... A Poet on Poetry By far the boldest definition of poetry is A.E. Housman's in that much-in-little of a book, The Name and Nature of Poetry, which I have recently read again. Yes, the boldest - and yet it seems to be both natural and penetrating, a logical completion of the hints thrown out by other poets concerning their own art. Wordsworth's is well-known: "All good poetry is the spontaneous... He says that all poetry goes back to "something in man which is obscure and latent, something older than the present organisation of his nature, like the patches of fen which still linger here and there in the drained lands of Cambridgeshire". His statement combines a deep truth with a disappointing ambiguity. "Obscure, latent, older" are correct terms because the region of poetry in us is unusual... that follow Nature's patient and progressive curve. So Keats's wet blanket is meant not for imaginative creators, however slow and piecemeal their labours, but for intellectual constructors without that something elemental which is evidently the sum and substance of what Wordsworth and Byron and Shelley are also driving at. Now comes Housman, himself a fine poet, and says that if poetry is not intellectual ...
... Housman, A.E. The Name and Nature of Poetry (Cambridge University Press, London, 1933). Hudson, Derek (Ed.) English Critical Essays, XX Century, Second Series (Oxford University Press, London, 1958). Inge, W.R. Christian Mysticism (Methuen, London, 6 th Edition, 1925.) Isaacs, J. The Background of Modern Poetry (Bell, London, 1951) ... Press, 1939). Bowra, CM. From Virgil to Milton (Macmillan, London, 1945). Heroic Poetry (Macmillan, London, 1952). Brockington, A. Allen. Mysticism and Poetry on a Basis Of Experience (Chapman & Hall, London, 1934). Brooks, Cleanth, &. Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry (Henry Holt, New York, 1955). Brough, John, Selections from Classical Sanskrit... Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Faber 8c Faber, London, 1955). Fausset, Hugh I'Anson. A Modern Prelude (Jonathan Cape, London, 1933). Frazer, Sri James George. Man, God and Immortality: Thoughts on Human Progress (Macmillan, London, 1927). Gayley, CM. Methods and Materials of Literary Criticism: Lyric, Epic, and allied forms of Poetry (New ...
... poets would have remained unpublished. What about the unintelligible Mallarmé who had such a great influence on later French poetry? 24 July 1936 Housman's Poetics I have been waiting for a long time to take a look at A. E. Housman's little book The Name and Nature of Poetry. It's been with you for months now. Perhaps you could spare it for a while? How did you like it? [A few days later]... that power will come first from the few who recognise good poetry when they see it and from those who can enter into his world; afterwards it can spread to the larger number who can recognise good poetry when it is shown to them; finally, the still larger public may come in who learn to appreciate by a slow education, not by instinct and nature. There was a sound principle in the opinion always held in... whole thing is that it is a mistake to erect a mental theory and try to force into its narrow mould the infinite variety of the processes of Nature. Shakespeare may have so much vital force as to recommend himself to a large audience not so much for his poetry at first as for his dramatic vividness and power; it must be remembered that it was the German romantics two centuries later who brought about ...
... alternative to Rossetti's version and with his own experience, recorded in another lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry , of how poetry is a matter of inspiration, a power from some submerged part of the being that is master of one's conscious mind and can even achieve wonderful transfusions of feeling — "pure poetry" — which this mind can hardly understand, surely such a poet gifted with such critical ... been a defect into an exquisite effect. No, nothing else than the line as traditionally it has appeared — without any blank after summer to put us in two minds — can be the divine and sovereign poetry which Page 290 Swinburne hailed. Lovers of literature cannot thank Mary Shelley enough for doing what she must have believed the true Shelley would ultimately have done if in 1822... granting the implication of autumn in summer and ultimately of winter itself by means of the verbal magic and mystery of the line's peculiar posture, how are we to visualise the autumn-winter Nature in the Nature-glory of summer? Is not the former characterised once for all by Shakespeare's imagery for himself in Sonnet 73? — That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves ...
... it is all or nothing —or at least all or a fall." ________________ instinctive-emotive way rather than intellectually is AE. Housman's terminology in his lecture. The Name and Nature of Poetry. The "thousand-petalled lotus" is Sri Aurobindo's addition denoting, in terms of the traditional Raja-Yogit psychology, the centre of consciousness just above the brain-mind, now a supra-i... Chadwick, who received from Sri Aurobindo the name "Arjavananda —"Arjava" for short. (K.D.S.) Page 90 Bengali. But would people have the same trouble with vernacular poetry, however like my own it might be?) 'It is precisely because what you put in is not intellectualism or a product of mental imagination that your poetry is difficult to those who are accustomed to... so, because it expressed something unusual, Dilip's poetry has had a difficulty in getting recognised except by people who were able to give the right response. Harin's poetry deals very skilfully with spiritual ideas or feelings through the language of the emotion and poetic imagination and intelligence--no difficulty there. As regards your poetry, it is indeed more compressed and carefully packed ...
... dislike for the arrangement. December 30, 1936 × "My spectre around me night and day... ", The Name and Nature of Poetry by A.E. Housman. pp. 43-44. × vaktavya : theme. ... with D regarding mystic poetry. He doesn't seem to feel much in Blake's poetry. It simply means that he has not the mystic mind. It does not make any difference to the value or beauty of Blake's poetry. And mystic poetry as a whole appeals to him less than poems with concrete meaning. Mystic poetry has a perfectly concrete meaning, much more than intellectual poetry which is much more abstract... understand your point in spite of such whipping. Is poetry to be felt only, only to have an inner thrill, tremor and quiver? What's the use of saying poetry, with a universal sweep like that? It is a question of mystic poetry, not of all poetry. Perhaps one must not use the intellect to understand what exactly or apparently is meant? Mystic poetry does not mean anything exactly or apparently; ...
... 1958, pp. 399-401. 123. "The Interpretation of Ancient Greek Literature'. Page 465 124. The Name and Nature of Poetry, p. 12. 125. pp. 157-8. 126. Savitri, p. 910. (The page-references are throughout to the standard edition of Savitri in Sri Aurobindo International University' Centre... article in Mother India, 19 May 1951. 13. Louis O. Coxe, in Poetry (December 1959), p. 180. 14. Savitri, p. 907. 15. ibid.., p. 829. 16. ibid., p. 823. 17. Max Muller writes: "Though Savitri is a name applied to the sun in general, it is most frequently used as the name of the rising and life- Page 472 ... 57. Collected Poems, pp. 97-8. 58. That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire. 59. After a Great Pain a Formal Feeling Comes. 60. Ode to the Confederate Dead. 61. Luke Havergal. 62. East Coker. 63. Sunday Morning. 64. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Poetry, pp. 7-8. 65. Maud, ii.82-3. 66. Letter to ...
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