One of a poet’s most authenticating credentials may be found in his epithets. In them is the supreme ordeal to which he must come and from which is no appeal. The epithets of the versifier, the mere metrician, are either contained in their substantives or add nothing that is worth while to the meaning; those of the true poet are instinct with novel and felicitous significances. They personify, ennoble, exalt, spiritualize, endow with thought and feeling, touch to action like the spear of Ithuriel. The prosaic mind can no more evolve such than ditch-water in a champagne-glass can sparkle and effervesce, or cold iron give off coruscations when hammered. Have the patience to consider a few of Mr. Sterling’s epithets, besides those in the lines already quoted:
“Purpled” realm; “striving” billows; “wattled” monsters; “timid” sapphires of the snow; “lit” wastes; a “stainèd” twilight of the South; “tiny” twilight in the jacinth, and “wintry” orb of the moonstone; “winy” agate and “banded” onyx; “lustrous” rivers; “glowering” pyres of the burning-ghaut, and so forth.
Do such words come by taking thought? Do they come ever to the made poet?—to the “poet of the day”—poet by resolution of a “committee on literary exercises”? Fancy the poor pretender, conscious of his pretense and sternly determined to conceal it, laboring with a brave confusion of legs and a copious excretion of honest sweat to evolve felicities like these!
THE CONTROVERSIALIST
AN INSURRECTION OF THE PEASANTRY
(From “The Cosmopolitan” Magazine, December, 1907)
WHEN a man of genius who is not famous writes a notable poem he must expect one or two of three things: indifference, indignation, ridicule. In commending Mr. George Sterling’s “A Wine of Wizardry,” published in the September number of this magazine, I had this reception of his work in confident expectation and should have mistrusted my judgment if it had not followed. The promptitude of the chorus of denunciation and scorn has attested the superb character of the poet’s work and is most gratifying.
The reason for the inevitable note of dissent is not far to seek; it inheres in the constitution of the human mind, which is instinctively hostile to what is “out of the common”—and a work of genius is pretty sure to be that. It is by utterance of uncommon thoughts, opinions, sentiments and fancies that genius is known. All distinction is difference, unconformity. He who is as others are—whose mental processes and manner of expression follow the familiar order—is readily acceptable because easily intelligible to those whose narrow intelligence, barren imagination, and meager vocabulary he shares. “Why, that is great!” says that complacent dullard, “the average man,” smiling approval. “I have thought that a hundred times myself!”—thereby providing abundant evidence that it is not great, nor of any value whatever. To “the average man” what is new is inconceivable, and what he does not understand affronts him. And he is the first arbiter in letters and art. In this “fierce democracie” he dominates literature with a fat and heavy hand—a hand that is not always unfamiliar with the critic’s pen.