梅内尔

University of Northern Iowa The Poems of Alice Meynell by Alice Meynell The North American Review, Vol. 218, No. 814 (Sep., 1923), pp. 425-427 Published by: University of Northern Iowa Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25113114 . Accessed: 04/12/2013 02:11 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The North American Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 60.247.76.16 on Wed, 4 Dec 2013 02:11:58 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NEW BOOKS REVIEWED The Poems of Alice Meynell (Complete Edition). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. So marked is the effect of intensity, artistic restraint, and elevation pro duced by Mrs. MeynelPs poetry that the reader on closing her book is feign to concur unreservedly in the pronouncement of Alfred Noyes: "She has given to English literature now, and to the literature of the world in centuries to come, what no other poet has been able to give?a volume of little more than a hundred pages containing only masterpieces." Admiration, of no ignoble sort, these verses are certain to evoke in every truly critical reader. But the more lasting value of masterpieces so curiously perfect must be estimated? in so far as such estimate is possible or fit?through considerations of the processes and the motives that explain the perfection. It is thus the total meaning (in no overt and commonplace sense of the word) that the critic must penetrate if he can. One's first unmistakable reaction is that of finding oneself in a highly rare fied atmosphere. The tone is high and serene with a hard-won serenity. On further reflection, the most striking single peculiarity of this poetry appears to be its " metaphysical turn "?its love of paradox and of inventions bordering on the quaint and curious, of "conceits" almost Elizabethan in style. This peculiarity, however, is plainly no mere mannerism. The intellect, one sees, is singularly exigent and active. At first thought, it appears to spend itself, artist-wise, almost wholly upon the form, and nothing but per fection of form suffices. Every line must be purely and impersonally poetic, possessing concision, polish, restraint, and music?above all, clearness and energy combined with subtlety of expression. Feeling is no doubt intense, but it is feeling disciplined and etherealized by the poetic form. In this re spect the author's poem upon silence has a special significance: Not, Silence, for thy idleness I raise My silence-bounded singing in thy praise, But for thy moulding of my Mozart's tune, Thy hold upon the bird that sings the moon, Thy magisterial ways. . . . Here it is not the pleasant, uncloying suggestion of Keats in the fourth line, nor the delicately accurate choice of the word magisterial that seems most significant: it is rather the fact that in this verse, as in the whole poem, the author externalizes, subtilizes and exalts limitation as few poets have ever done. This content downloaded from 60.247.76.16 on Wed, 4 Dec 2013 02:11:58 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 426 THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW And yet it is no discipline of external form which gives its true character to this poetry. The intimate process of its growth appears to be that of a strangely acute awareness of all possible attitudes, a search among them that is as persistent and instinctive as a child's need of comfort, an unchildlike choice and acceptance of the most difficult. It is this and no mere love of art for art's sake (the hypostasis of art) which explains the subtlety, the love of profound paradox, the refinement of form. In the broadest sense the poems are "spiritual" (because they are intellec tual) much more than are those of most poets whose emotional expression seems freer. In them sublimation appears to be carried to the highest degree, for it begins with feelings already far above the level of those primitive emo tions that have to be sublimated in order that life may be tolerable, and it goes much farther than most poets have carried it without being diverted inta purely religious or mystical channels. Obsession there may be, or victory over obsession, but none of that hallucination which makes the romantic poets at once enchanting and disturbing. The way chosen is always the high and difficult way?never the path of easiest release through the ministration of "art". Mrs. Meynell has never written in verse what in music is some times called a "consolation". On the whole it seems to one that the poet is hypersensitive rather than clairvoyant. It is as if the psyche, peculiarly conscious of itself as apart from the reports of its senses, detached itself from all bodily comfortings or per turbations, and wrestled with its difficulties on a plane near reality. It is not intellect in the ordinary sense, it is not emotion in the common meaning, which judges and accepts. The thing that determines form and content is as nearly as possible "pure spirit." Unshielded by illusion or the pleasant daydreams that pass for the poetry of life, this poet, vulnerable through her keen perceptions and her equally acute logic, cries out to sleep to protect her "cowering consciousness" and to soothe her with the divine foolishness and innocence of dreams. If one were to find fault with this body of poetry as a whole, one would say that in general, it is not in Wordsworth's sense "soul-animating". It is all of great value because of its rare sincerity, its refined and subtle truth, its delicately wrought perfection of speech. Being thus true and thus wrought, it in every line deserves to be called poetry, art, beauty. But such valuation places the emphasis upon art as an incidental result of processes that have in themselves a profound significance. To appreciate Mrs. Meynell in this way is exceptionally difficult; hence her audience is of "the fit, though few." If, however, we seek for something more than a "literary " verdict on these poems, we must say that, humanly speaking, their greatest qualities are a thoroughly feminine acuteness of logic and a thoroughly feminine courage in the accept ance of attitudes most difficult to maintain. In more than one poem these qualities are explicit. The stanza called Veni, Creator may be chosen for example: This content downloaded from 60.247.76.16 on Wed, 4 Dec 2013 02:11:58 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions NEW BOOKS REVIEWED 427 So humble things Thou hast borne for us, O God, Left'st Thou a path of lowliness untrod? Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden. For we endure the tender pain of pardon,? One with another, we forbear. Give heed, Look at the mournful world Thou hast decreed. The time has come. At last we hapless men Know all our haplessness all through. Come, then, Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven, Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven. Such sayings are to be received by those who can receive them. Preludes. By John Drinkwater. New York: Houghton Mifflin Com pany. Love is Mr. Drinkwater's theme in this sequence of poems?love in all senses. There is here little distinction of "love sacred and profane". The love of Jonathan and David, the love of man and woman that the world calls "illicit", the love of mother and child, the love of the body, the love of the mind, the love of the soul?all are one. And this one love is to be exalted above all things. The cult is not a new one: moreover, it is a cult to be re spected. It is, however, never quite the same thing in any two minds. The first thing that it seems proper to say about Mr. Drinkwater (purely for the purpose of clearing the way to an understanding of his poetry) is that, despite the strangeness and fascination of his verses, he is not, in any definite sense of the term, at all a mystic. The word mystic is, of course, susceptible of many varied meanings. It is a word of great potency which is often desired because of its traditions. There is thus a tendency to apply it to any exalted frame of mind and to any profound faith. But almost any state of mind may become exalted and almost any faith may be profound and assured. What one means is that Mr. Drinkwater does not succeed in being mystical as Rossetti was mystical. Really there is as much flesh and bones in his poetry as there is in the philosophy of Unamuno. Like the Spaniard, he asserts the wholeness of life and of love. One knows, of course, that Rossetti spoke of "bathing together in God's sight", and that he was accused of having founded a "fleshly school of poetry". Nevertheless, Rossetti made the flesh mystical, while Mr. Drinkwater tends to assimilate all love to the glory and innocence of the flesh. Thus it happens that his poem entitled Gold is by no means comparable to The Blessed Damosel, which it resembles in theme and in metre. The stanza? There is a castle on a hill So far into the sky This content downloaded from 60.247.76.16 on Wed, 4 Dec 2013 02:11:58 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Article Contents p. [425] p. 426 p. 427 Issue Table of Contents The North American Review, Vol. 218, No. 814 (Sep., 1923), pp. 289-432 Rum Running and International Law [pp. 289-296] Coal Control and the Constitution [pp. 297-308] Poincaré: Man and Policy [pp. 309-315] Significance of the Irish Free State [pp. 316-324] Selecting Citizens [pp. 325-333] Recent Advances in Physical Science [pp. 334-345] Democracy in Hispanic America [pp. 346-352] What Is Bad Poetry? [pp. 353-368] County Matters [pp. 369-375] Lunatics of Literature [pp. 376-387] Of Standards [pp. 388-398] René Boylesve: An Unsung "Immortal" [pp. 399-409] Review: The Book of the Month: The Royal Road to Affability [pp. 410-416] Affairs of the World [pp. 417-424] New Books Reviewed Review: untitled [pp. 425-427] Review: untitled [pp. 427-428] Review: untitled [pp. 428-429] Review: untitled [pp. 430-431] Review: untitled [pp. 431-432]