Principles of literary criticism

by I. A. Richards

Shelley, it is known, crystallised much of his philosophy in the sentence: ‘Death is the veil which those who live call life’, and the reference[†] here to the guardian of Hell Gate,

What seem’d his head

The likeness of a Kingly Crown had on,

is not accidental or unimportant for the understanding of the poem.

Some care is needed in considering the problem of allusions. There may be worthy and unworthy motives behind their employment ad their enjoyment. There are some to whom a familiarity with literature occasions a sense of superiority over others which is trivial and mean. The pleasure of recognition, proportional as it is to the difficulty or unobtrusiveness of the allusion is a thing of slight value, not to be confused with literary or poetic values. It is perfectly possible for a reader, familiar with the Nativity Hymn, for example, to receive all that Shelley intended without ever noticing the allusion, without, that is to say, any recognition. But the erudite often forget that this happens. To turn the capacity of recognising recondite references into a shibboleth by which culture may be estimated is a perversion to which scholarly persons are too much addicted. The point is worth mentioning, since this snobbishness, percolating down (or, if the metaphor be preferred, by repercussion) is responsible for much insincerity and timidity, for wrong attitudes of many kinds towards literature, for irritation and oppression developing into distaste and neglect of poetry. Allusion is a trap for the writer almost as effective as for the academic critic. It invites insincerity. It may encourage and disguise laziness. When it becomes a habit it is a disease. But these dangers form no ground for denying to allusion, and the similar resources of which it is typical, a fit and justifiable place in poetry.

Allusion is the most striking of the ways in which poetry takes into its service elements and forms of experience which are not inevitable to life but need to be specially acquired. And the difficulty which it raises is merely a special instance of a general communicative difficulty which will probably increase for the poetry of the future. All the thought and feeling of recent man goes on in terms of experience which is much more likely to be special and peculiar to the individual, than, let us say, the experience of medieval man. The survival of medieval man on such a vast scale among us should not mislead in this matter. The people who are most keenly and variously interested, that is to say, the people whose lives are most valuable on our theory of value, the people for whom the poet writes and by his appeal to whom he is judged, inevitably build up their minds with far more varied elements than has ever been the case before. And the poet, in so far as he is equal to his opportunities, does the same. It is hard, and, in fact, impossible, to deny him his natural and necessary resources on the ground that a majority of his readers will not understand. This is not his fault but the fault of the social structure. Given present conditions and future developments in the directions indicated by the changes of the last two hundred years, it is extremely probable that poets will become not less but more allusive, that their work will depend more and more not only upon other poetry but upon all manner of special fields of familiarity.[*] Many of the finest and most widely significant experiences, and those therefore most suitable for poetry, come nowadays, for example, through reading pieces of advanced research. There is nothing new in this, of course, nothing that was not happening when Donne wrote. The difficulty springs from the fact that research is so much further ahead than it used to be.

CHAPTER XXIX
Permanence as a Criterion

Wherewith being crown’d,
Crooked eclipses ’gainst his glory fight.

Shakespeare, Sonnet LX.

The permanence of poetry is a subject closely connected with the foregoing. Just as there is a prejudice in favour of work with a wide popular appeal, so there is another in favour of work which lasts, which has “stood the verdict of the centuries”, or is thought likely to stand it. Both are in part due to critical timidity; if we cannot decide ourselves, let us at least count hands and go with the majority.