Reginald Bateman, Teacher and Soldier / A Memorial Volume of Selections from His Lectures and Other Writings

by Reginald Bateman

The teacher who knows a piece of poetry with his head only can never teach it as it ought to be taught. He may be able to repeat it word for word, he may know all about its history, its philology, its structure, but if he has not felt it, if he has not reproduced it sympathetically within himself, he cannot teach it. Similarly the student, unless he is capable of sympathizing with such emotions as are recorded in poetry, will be unable to get more than a head knowledge of it. If this power of sympathizing is present in ever so small a degree, it can be indefinitely developed under the inspiration of a good teacher.

What follows then? First, that a teacher who lacks the higher appreciation of literature can certainly never teach it to others, although probably thirty or forty per cent. of his pupils, more gifted than himself by Nature in this respect, will get an appreciation in spite of him. Secondly, that even supposing a teacher has this appreciation, it will be of little use to him, unless he has the power of communicating it to others, that is, of awakening in them sympathy with what he himself feels.

Assuming, then, that the teacher has this appreciation, what is the best way of communicating it? There are, perhaps, only two possible ways. One is by talking about the poem, by trying to describe its effect upon one; but the better and more effective way is by reading, by vocal interpretation. All literature, but especially poetry, is written not for the eye, but for the ear. Its appeal, then, should be made, not through the eye but through the ear. The sound of the words, not singly, but in groups, the rhythm, the intonation, all these give the atmosphere of a poem. Sound is to a poem what colour is to a picture. Get away from the printed word, the mere symbol; it means something for the head, it is true, but nothing for the heart until it is translated into sound.

The first thing a teacher of literature must do, then, is to learn to read. He need not take a course in elocution; stamping, gesticulating, waving his arms, shouting, whispering, hissing, and other tricks of the professional elocutionist will benefit him little; all that is necessary is that he should be able, by the intonation of his voice, to convey to his students the effect which a poem has made upon himself. Diligent practice, the subjection of the voice to the will—these are what he needs. The average man cannot hope to reach any very high degree of efficiency as a reader, but all that the teacher needs is to be able to read clearly, with a voice well controlled and capable of expressing various shades of emotion, with a good sense of rhythm and the grouping of vowel sounds.

The first thing, then, for one who would teach literature is to endeavour to reach at least that stage of vocal culture which I have described. Of course, a good deal may be done in the way of conveying appreciation of a poem by talking about it, but to talk about a poem well is almost as difficult as to read it well, and at the best is not nearly so effective.

Assuming that a man is equipped with these essentials, a true appreciation of literature and the power of communicating his appreciation to others, how is he to approach the teaching of a piece of literature?

The first thing he must do is to assimilate it thoroughly himself, to go over it again and again, to practise again and again the vocal interpretation of it, to be sure that he has caught the spirit not only of the whole, but of the smallest part, that no shade of meaning, however subtle, has escaped him.

"We must long inhale," says Corson, "the choral atmosphere of a work of genius before we attempt, if we attempt at all, any intellectual formulation of it; which formulation must necessarily be comparatively limited, because genius, as genius, is transcendental, and therefore outside the domain of the intellect."

Then, having assimilated it, let him go further and get a background for it. Let him know, if possible, its history, what suggested it, under what circumstances it was composed, its relation to other writings of the poet and of the age, what the best critics have said about it, and so on. Let him endeavour to neglect no scrap of information which will increase his own appreciation and understanding of the poem. When he has done all this, then, and not till then, is he ready to teach it. If he has plenty of time and a small class, he will probably begin by trying to find out how far his pupils have assimilated the spirit of the poem. His task is then to interpret the piece of literature, to try to give the student the impression it has made on him, what it means to him, what emotions it arouses in him. This is to be done by reading it, or, if the piece is long, by reading such parts of it as will form a connected whole, filling in with descriptive narrative. In many cases it will be necessary before attempting an interpretation to say a few words which will enable the pupil to listen to the reading in the proper frame of mind, and will create the proper atmosphere for him.

When the first impression has been made, the work has only just begun. Suppose one has hit the right keynote, that the class has caught the spirit of the poem; there will still be much of it which is unintelligible or misty to them.