That point is debatable, of course; but what will hardly be questioned, apart from the joy we frequently experience here in seeing a thing consummately done, is the importance of this work as an experiment. That is obviously another kind of value, with a touch of scientific interest added to the æsthetics. And the importance of the experiment is enhanced, or at any rate we realize it more fully, from the fact that the poet has been generous enough to elaborate his theory in a preface. That is no euphemism, as other prefaces and theories of exasperating memory might seem to suggest. It is real generosity to give away the fundamentals of your art, to show as clearly as is done here the principles upon which you work and the exact means which are taken to give effect to them. It is courageous too, particularly when confessions are made which supply a key to personality. For the hostile critic is thus doubly armed. But the 'gentle reader' is armed too; and Mr Hueffer would seem to have been wise, even from the point of view of mere prudence, to take the risk.
The reader of this book then will find the poems doubly interesting in the light that the preface throws upon them. He may, of course, read and enjoy them without a single reference to it—that is the measure of their poetic value. Or, on the other hand, he may read the preface, brim full of stimulating ideas, without reference to the poetry. But the full significance of either can only be appreciated when they are taken in conjunction. For instance, we light upon this phrase indicating the material of the poet's art: "Modern life, so extraordinary, so hazy; so tenuous, with still such definite and concrete spots in it." It is a charming phrase, and from its own suggestiveness gently constrains one to think. But if we turn at once to the most considerable poem of the collection, "To All the Dead," we shall see our poet in the very act of recording the life that he visualizes in this way; and we shall see how remarkably the texture of the poem fits the description in the passage just quoted: "life hazy and tenuous, with such definite and concrete spots."
To tell the truth, haze is the first thing we see when observing the effect of this poem. It is pervasive too, and for a time nothing more is visible save two or three islets of concrete experience, projecting above it and appearing to float about in it, unstable and unrelated. This first effect is rather like that of a landscape in a light autumn ground-mist, which floats along the valley-meadows leaving tree-tops and hillsides clear. Or it is like trying to recollect what happened to you on a certain memorable day. The mood comes back readily enough, golden or sombre; but the events which induced it, or held it in check, or gave it so sudden a reverse only return reluctantly, one by one, and not even in their proper order; so that we have to puzzle them out and rearrange and fit them together before the right sequence appears.
Such is the main impression of "To All the Dead." Only the artist has been at work here selecting his incidents with a keen eye and sensitive touch, brooding over them with a temperament of complex charm, and for all their apparent disjunction, relating and unifying them, as in life, with the subtlest and frailest of links. As a consequence, at a second glance the haze begins to lift, while at a third the whole landscape is visible, a prospect very rich and fair despite the ugly spots which the artist has not deigned to eliminate, and which, as a fact, he has deliberately retained.
But there is no doubt the first glance is puzzling. If one were not caught by the interest of those concrete spots it might even be tiresome, and one would probably not trouble to take the second glance. But they are so curious in themselves, and so boldly sketched, that we are arrested; and the next moment the general design emerges. First the picture of the ancient Chinese queen—a Mongolian Helen—
With slanting eyes you would say were blind—
In a dead white face.
That, with its quaint strange setting and its suggestion of a guilty love story, is a thing to linger over for its own sake, apart from its apparent isolation. Nor do we fully realize till later (although something subtler than intelligence has already perceived it), that in this opening passage the theme has been stated, and that the key-note was struck in the line
She should have been dead nine thousand year....
But we pass abruptly, in the second movement, to our own time and to the very heart of our own civilization. We are paying a call on a garrulous friend in the rue de la Paix. He is an American and therefore a philosopher; but as he descants on the 'nature of things,' doubtless in the beautiful English of the gentle American, we let our attention wander to things that touch us more sharply, to sights and sounds outside the window, each vividly perceived and clearly picked out, but all resolving themselves into a symbol, vaguely impressive, of the complicated whirl of life. And this passage again, with its satiric flavour and dexterity of execution, we are content to enjoy in its apparent detachment, until we glimpse the link which unites it to the larger interest of the whole.
The link with that ancient queen is in a flash of contrast—a couple of Chinese chiropodists, grinning from their lofty window at a mannequin on the opposite side of the street. And as the theme is developed, episodes which seem irrelevant at first, are soon found to have their relation with the thought—of death and tragic passion—on which the poet is brooding. At a chance word dropped by the American host the confused and perplexing sights and sounds of the outer world vanish; and the philosophical lecture, droning hitherto just on the edge of consciousness, fades even out of hearing—