Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
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Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922
Lovecraft, H. P. (Howard Phillips)
Essays; Literature -- History and criticism; Periodicals
Mrs. Renshaw is well represented both by prose and by verse, the most
interesting of her pieces being possibly the essay entitled "Poetic
Spontaneity", wherein more arguments are advanced in her effort to prove
the inferior importance of form and metre in poesy. According to Mrs.
Renshaw, the essence of all genuine poetry is a certain spontaneous and
involuntary spiritual or psychological perception and expression;
incapable of rendition in any prescribed structure, and utterly
destroyed by subsequent correction or alteration of any kind. That is,
the bard must respond unconsciously to the noble impulse furnished by a
fluttering bird, a dew-crowned flower, or a sun-blest forest glade;
recording his thoughts exactly as evolved, and never revising the
result, even though it be detestably cacophonous, or absolutely
unintelligible to his less inspired circle of readers. To such a theory
as this we must needs reply, that while compositions of the sort
indicated may indeed represent poesy, they certainly represent art in
its proper sense no more than do "futuristic" pictures and other modern
monstrosities of a like nature. The only exact means whereby a poet may
transmit his ideas to others is language, a thing both definite and
intellectual. Granting that vague, chaotic, dissonant lines are the best
form in which the tender suitor of the Muses may record his spiritual
impressions for his own benefit and comprehension, it by no means
follows that such lines are at all fitted to convey those impressions to
minds other than his own. When language is used without appropriateness,
harmony, or precision, it can mean but little save to the person who
writes it. The soul of a poem lies not in words but in meaning; and if
the author have any skill at all in recording thought through language,
he will be able to refine the uncouth mass of spontaneous verbiage
which first comes to him as representing his idea, but which in its
original amorphous state may fail entirely to suggest the same idea to
another brain. He will be able to preserve and perpetuate his idea in a
style of language which the world may understand, and in a rhythm which
may not offend the reader's sense of propriety with conspicuous
harshness, breaks, or sudden transitions.
"Flames of the Shadow", Mrs. Renshaw's longest poetical contribution to
this issue, is a powerful piece which, despite the author's theory,
seems in no way injured by its commendably regular structure.
"Immortality of Love" is likewise rather regular, though the plan of
rhyming breaks down in the last stanza. "For You" and "Sacrament of
Spirit" are short pieces, the former containing an "allowable" rhyming
of "tongue" and "long", which would not meet with the approval of the
Kleiner type of critic, but upon which this department forbears to
frown.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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