"Art is Not the Same Thing as Cerebration'

“Surely those lines possess, if not actual merit, at least the same kind of charm as belongs to a pink geranium or a soft-centre chocolate.” 

Seasoned readers of poetry know the feeling. Enjoying the occasional morsel of schmaltz or kitsch is not a capital crime. After my father-in-law died last month, my wife was inventorying his library and asked me what I wanted and what ought to be sold or given away. I claimed a set of Kipling and a two-volume collection of O. Henry’s stories. Among his books was an attractive, leatherbound edition of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poetry, published in the nineteenth century. Thanks to the Quaker poet I can still recite the opening lines of “The Barefoot Boy”:

 

“Blessings on thee, little man,

Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!

With thy turned-up pantaloons,

And thy merry whistled tunes;

With thy red lip, redder still

Kissed by strawberries on the hill . . .”

    

And the great patriotic declaration in “Barbara Frietchie”: “‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, / But spare your country’s flag,’ she said.” Those lines have endured for more than half a century in memory, in part because we had to memorize them in English class. Our forebears cherished those words, read them aloud for entertainment. I definitely wanted the Whittier volume. When walking, I sometimes recite these poems and better stuff – Eliot, Tate, Auden – in lieu of Spotify. There’s a place for people like me, flanked by the armed camps of snobs and philistines. Poetry once meant eloquence and pleasure for those not themselves poets or even particularly literary-minded.

 

The critic quoted at the top is George Orwell, writing his column in the Tribune seventy-five years ago, on March 7, 1947. Orwell has returned to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1900, published in 1900 and revised in 1918. I'm inheriting a copy from my father-in-law, who earned the book as a school prize seventy years ago for academic accomplishment. Orwell writes: “Now, I do not deny that The Oxford Book is useful, that there is a great deal of good stuff in it, and that every schoolchild ought to have a copy, in default of something better.” However, he complains that the final section of the book is disappointing. He’s right. The late-nineteenth century was not a stellar time for English verse, though Orwell tallies the exceptions:

 

“There was Ernest Dowson—‘Cynara’ is not my idea of a good poem, but I would sooner have it than Henley’s ‘England, My England’—there was Hardy, who published his first poems in 1898, and there was Housman, who published A Shropshire Lad in 1896.”

 

It’s always risky evaluating contemporary and recent poets. Formerly exalted reputations can quickly turn to dust. I suspect it’s no longer the Age of (Robert ) Lowell, though he was top dog when I was a kid. Will Geoffrey Hill, Richard Wilbur and Les Murray survive? My money’s on them but Time is the inarguable critic. In the passage quoted at the top, “those lines” he mentions are from Ernest Dowson’s “Cynara”  

 

“I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses, riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale lost lilies out of mind;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, all the time, because the dance was long—

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.”

 

Margaret Mitchell borrowed the final phrase of the first line for her potboiler, a sort of immortality. Orwell wants to correct the impression that he might be a poetry snob:

 

“Looking through what I have written above, I see that I have spoken rather snootily of Dowson’s ‘Cynara’, I know it is a bad poem, but it is bad in a good way, or good in a bad way, and I do not wish to pretend that I never admired it. Indeed, it was one of the favourites of my boyhood.”

  

Two years earlier, Orwell had published a brief essay titled “Good Bad Books,” in which he writes: “The existence of good bad literature — the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one’s intellect simply refuses to take seriously — is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.”