The eighteenth century poets and the Symbolists alike come under our definition and can be classed by the formula that depends upon it. I have suggested that the eighteenth century poets cared mostly for kinetic speech, and, indeed, carried their appreciation of it so high as sometimes to forget that poetry could do anything but speak wisely and well. Few schools have suffered a greater variety of imperfect and bungling definitions than that of Symbolism. The Symbolist aims have been described as “an escape from the thought of death,” and “intimacy with spiritual things.” Nowhere has there been a definition that has shown their relation to the aims of poetry in general. But, when Mallarmé says: “Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu; le suggérer, voilà le rêve,” he is saying, in other words, that poetry depends on potential speech. The Symbolists sought to write poetry that should be purely potential, and in the revision of certain of his poems Mallarmé tried to eliminate bit by bit the whole structure of kinetic speech that had been in them. The eighteenth century aims carried to their extreme would have meant bad prose; the Symbolist aims carried to their extreme would have meant (as they sometimes did) unintelligibility. Poetry is made by a combination of kinetic with potential speech. Eliminate either and the result is no longer poetry.
I do not propose the words kinetic and potential as terms of abuse or praise, though in different ages there have been artists who would have used them so. The eighteenth century poets would have used kinetic as a term of praise; the Symbolists would have used it as a term of abuse. The fact that different schools would have set different values on the words is itself a proof that they may be serviceable to historians and critics. Literature does indeed vary between these extremes, its kinetic quality preserving it from nonsense, its potential quality separating it from bad prose. Some sort of relevancy would be discoverable in any history that set itself to trace these variations. Some sort of relevancy is obvious in all criticism that attempts (as all good criticism does) the enhancement of the potential and the clarification of the kinetic element in such literature as happens to be its subject. In any case, an adoption of the definition of literature that this essay upholds would make ridiculous the classification of books by their subjects and of writers by their opinions, on which so many intellects have wasted time and vitality worthy of a more profitable employment.
1911.
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
Edinburgh & London
FOOTNOTES
[1] After passing this note for press, I learn that this essay has been reprinted at Tokyo in a new edition of Mr. Noguchi’s The Pilgrimage.
[2] For the reputation of Breughel d’Enfer is based on his imitations of his father, Breughel le Vieux, to whom is attributed the Temptation of St. Anthony at Genoa.
[3] A piece of money coined by Charles VIII.
[4] Figures that strike the hour on the clock-tower at Dijon.
[5] The quotations in this essay are taken from Dr. Oscar Levy’s admirable English edition of Nietzsche, translated by Drs. W. A. Haussmann and M. A. Mügge, Messrs. Paul V. Cohn, Thomas Common, J. M. Kennedy, A. M. Ludovici and H. B. Samuel, and Miss Helen Zimmern: eighteen volumes published by Mr. T. N. Foulis.