[A] "Stock, signifies bulks, or beams; holms, i.e. islets, or river islands; hence, Stockholm."
A FRENCHMAN'S OPINIONS OF AMERICAN FEMALE POETS.
We find in the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes, for May 15, an article, which we translate for The International, on "The Female Poets of America,"[B] by M. E. Montegut. This writer's opinions respecting the influence of Protestantism on the cultivation of poetry may amuse those who remember who have been the greatest poets. It is a part of the cant of criticism to point to mediæval art as a fruit of the Roman Catholic ascendency—as if the Roman Catholics had done more than the Protestants for high art since the Reformation. But M. Montegut is a man of wit, and his criticism, though we confess that it loses some of its point in our version, will entertain the hundred of our countrywomen who make verses.
It is an opinion very generally entertained that the Americans are almost exclusively occupied with material affairs, with commerce, and the varied forms of mechanical industry. The volume of Mr. Griswold will contribute to dispel any such idea, for in its four hundred pages, nearly of the size of quartos, there are quoted ninety of the most celebrated female poets of North America: ninety female poets! and all, with few exceptions, contemporary. Why, all Europe could not count a greater number. If therefore, we bear in mind that this voluminous poetic flore contains only the names of women, and that Mr. Rufus Griswold has consecrated two volumes of similar dimensions, one to the Poets of the masculine gender, and the other to the Prose-Writers of both genders, it is difficult to believe in the literary sterility of the United States. But why is it, that among these three or four hundred writers, only three or four are known beyond the Atlantic? It is, that a literature is not altogether composed of harmonious reveries, of elegant imitations, of agreeable fancies; that poetry does not consist in a melodious rhythm only, nor even in a tasteful choice of words, nor in a perfect knowledge of language. Poetry, as well as all the possible expressions of thought and genius, arises from the very depths of the soul. It is the exterior expression of the national life, the recital,—from the lips of an individual animated and transported with the popular spirit—of the mysteries of his country's existence, and the desires, aspirations and convictions of his countrymen. The poet is the interpreter of the moral character of his country to other nations, and his works are the highest embodiment of the manners and habits of life in his country and his time. The poetry which does not fulfil these conditions is not poetry. Any man writing verse, who does not feel himself agitated in a more lively and distinct manner with the desires which torment his contemporaries as a vague fever, who does not know that his whole mission is to express, in an artistic and harmonious form, the clamors and the incorrect utterance of these desires, is not and cannot be a poet.
If such be the moral necessities which give birth to poetry, how is it that America has not an original literature? How is it that she has no great artists, and that there are but three or four writers—Cooper, Channing, Emerson—who well express her spirit and tendencies? None of the great moral qualities necessary to a poet are wanting to Americans. They have a national pride, approaching even to sensitiveness; they have firm and free religious faiths; life is energetic and manifests itself abundantly every where. How is it, we ask, that we meet no man of genius to tell us of the miracles of triumph over nature and barbarism; of those hardy industrial enterprises, and those wonderful displays of human activity around them; to sing the adventurous heroes of commerce and mechanism, and that singular marriage in domestic life of sedentary virtues with a changing, nomadic disposition—the love of the fireside, which remains undisturbed in the midst of perpetual displacement, as of old the tents of the patriarchs were pitched in the evening and stricken in the morning? Is it that there is no poetry in these subjects? Here, indeed, is a curious phenomenon, and one of the least-studied laws of literary history.
But ought we to regard Americans unfortunate because they have no literature of their own? In some points of view it is a reason for envying them. When true poetry appears among a people, it is not always a prophetic sign of future greatness; it is oftener a reflection of greatness passed away. It announces not new destinies, but recounts a history of the vanished and vanishing. Whenever the voice of a great poet is heard, we are sure that the customs, the institutions, and the religions he sings, are near their decline. Thus, Shakspeare, the most faithful mirror of the middle and feudal ages, came with reform and the sixteenth century; and Calderon, with the decay of Spanish Catholicism. That opinions and manners should partake of poesy, it is necessary that they begin to fade away into the realm of the fabulous past; it is necessary, in order that the ideal should appear, that these cease to exist. It was formerly said, and not without reason, "Happy the people who have no literature!" and in our time we are tempted to say: Happy the people who have no great poets! it is a proof that they enjoy the plentitude of life, that they have nothing to regret, that they are still in all their primal innocency, and the native energy of their being.
It is curious, also, to observe, how men animated by an heroic faith, seldom see that that faith and the deeds which it inspires, belong to the poetic and ideal. The first Puritans, who embarked, without resources, in a frail vessel, to seek in America the enjoyment of a free religion, now appear to us truly poetical. Walter Scott has drawn a thousand original characters of cavaliers and round-heads. Do you know what was the literature of those men full of the spirit of the Bible? Do you know what was the character of the first poetic publications in the United States? We open Mr. Griswold's volume, and the first name is that of Anne Bradstreet, who proceeded thither with her father, an ardent nonconformist. Here is the title under which her poems were printed, in the year 1640, at Boston: "Several Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight; wherein especially is contained a compleat Discourse and Description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, and Seasons of the Year, together with an exact Epitome of the Three First Monarchies, viz. the Assyrian, Persian, and Grecian; and the beginning of the Roman Commonwealth to the end of their last King; with divers other Pleasant and Serious Poems: By a Gentlewoman of New England." This Mrs. Bradstreet, called by the Americans, at this epoch, the "tenth muse"—probably a very good Protestant—made invocations to Phœbus, and imitated —— Dubartas! Certainly, the emigrant Americans, who were indeed the most zealous of all Protestants, did not suspect the mournful poetry which Protestantism contains—a poetry which we perceive to-day. It is even a part of the American life of our times. But this absence of real poetry is far from being a bad sign; it is, on the contrary, a proof of strength and energy.
Great works are not what we require of Americans; we would rather endeavor to discover in them the traces of the moral spirit of their country, its philosophical and historic signs, rather than poetic fables skilfully constructed and eloquently told. For example, these female poets of North America, suggest an interesting question for Europeans to examine. Have all those Misses and Mistresses who write poems, dramas and sonnets, any features of resemblance with our female authors? Has America, which is represented so coarse in manners, inherited the vices of European society, and become so degenerate as to give birth to that monstrous nondescript, named among us a bas-bleu? We have endeavored, diligently, to discover, in this large volume, traces of resemblance between our women of letters and the female poets of America, but we have discovered none. These daughters and wives of American citizens, of merchants, bankers, magistrates and doctors in theology, do not write as our female authors, from vain ambition, or love, or scandal, or (what among us is by no means uncommon) to repent of the scandal that they have occasioned. They write as among us young girls draw or sing. Poesy is for them an ornamental art, and nothing more. Besides, this great number of female poets in America, is explained by the much more liberal education received by the women of English blood and of the Protestant religion. We can find better specimens of poetry, certainly, but nothing equalling them in the discretion and reserve that reign in all their verses. We have sought, diligently, to discover the sentiments which American women are most pleased in translating into written poetry: one only is expressed, freely and energetically—maternal love. The other sentiments and virtues are carefully veiled, as subjects upon which it would be improper to dwell. Such verses are full of scruples and delicacies, and to us, it is their principal charm. Love, so difficult for the female heart to acknowledge in words; passionate confidences, so easily turned into sarcasms, and almost repulsive when uttered by the mouth of a woman, find no place in the inspirations of the American poetess. There are no strongly expressed individual passions. Vague and objectless longings—the cold lights of mere fancy, are the characteristics of those writers. Sometimes we discover a regret, or a mournful remembrance, but so obscure as to be nearly lost in a vastly diffused hope of some good which is not realized. We have endeavored to discover if the sentiment of conjugal love were there, but we are disappointed. To us, Europeans, who are overwhelmed with romances, in which this chaste sentiment is analyzed and written of in a manner to produce absolute nausea, it is not, perhaps, known how much discretion there is in this passionless exterior, and how commendable it is that so holy a sentiment should not pass the sacred inclosures of the female heart; that it should not wound the delicacies of its own natural reserve and silence. The talents of these writers are exercised upon permitted subjects, and not, as too often among our own female poets, upon subjects at once easy and unlawful.