“Can there be a great Artist without poetry?”
How might I respond if a poet I respected, to whom I sent a sample of my work and solicited critical advice, opined that literature cannot be the business of my life and it ought not to be? Might I be prickly? Defensive? Crushed? Granted that hypotheticals can only be answered provisionally, it is a safe bet that I would not be thrilled. No matter the de rigueur request for an honest critique, we tend to hope the judgment will be that we are gifted and should pursue the art as if called to it by divine dispensation.
Many years ago the editor of a magazine to which I submitted a small selection of poems replied with a handwritten rejection note that went on for several pages whose gist was that some people are well advised to stick to reading poetry and not try writing it. The poems must have made some impression to prompt the handwritten note instead of the standard rejection slip; perhaps he thought them not just bad, but real bad, bad beyond redemption. I have no record of the poems that comprised the submission, only the recollection that they were dark in theme and, in fairness to the editor, in all likelihood pretty poor. My knee-jerk reaction was something along the lines of “screw him.” Soon enough I concluded that the poems should never have seen the light of day, in that my critic was correct, and the decision to submit to that particular publication was a poor one. My spirit was not scarred. I kept writing.
Robert Southey (1774–1843) was an English poet of the Romantic school who in his youth palled around with the likes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, with Coleridge was involved in Sir Humphrey Davy’s early experiments with nitrous oxide, and was appointed Poet Laureate in 1813, though only after Sir Walter Scott refused the post (bio notes lazily lifted from Wikipedia). In December 1836 twenty-year-old Charlotte Brontë wrote to Southey asking his opinion of some verses she sent him. This would be akin, I suppose, to my writing in 1972 to someone of the stature of, say, Robert Lowell, had I been presumptuous enough to do so. I can scarcely imagine it; nor can I imagine that I had at that time any writings that might have elicited even a lukewarm reception.
No mention of Southey should pass without noting Byron’s dedication to “Don Juan”:
I
Bob Southey! You’re a poet — Poet-laureate,
And representative of all the race,
Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, — yours has lately been a common case, —
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at?
With all the Lakers, in and out of place?
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
Like ‘four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;III
You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know,
At being disappointed in your wish
To supersede all warblers here below,
And be the only Blackbird in the dish;
And then you overstrain yourself, or so
And tumble downward like the flying fish
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob,
And fall, for lack of mositure quite a-dry, Bob!
Ah, but I digress. Southey wrote for the most part encouragingly to Charlotte:
You evidently possess & in no inconsiderable degree what Wordsworth calls ‘the faculty of Verse’…[but] Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life: & it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it…But do not suppose that I disparage the gift wh[ich] you possess…Write poetry for its own sake, not in a spirit of emulation, & not with a view to celebrity: the less you aim at that, the more likely you will be to deserve, & finally to obtain it.”
Notwithstanding the statement that literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life and ought not to be, however unexceptionable that view may have been at the time it was expressed, Southey’s words offer more than faint praise and the sound advice to write poetry for its own sake, not in the spirit of emulation and not with a view to celebrity, and trust that recognition will come in due course.
Charlotte in her reply notes that on first reading Southey’s letter she
felt only shame, and a regret that I had ever ventured to trouble you with my crude rhapsody…but after I had thought a little and read it again and again ― the prospect seemed to clear. You do not forbid me to write; you do not say that what I write is utterly destitute of merit; you only warn me against the folly of neglecting real duties, for the sake of imaginative pleasures — of writing for the love of fame & for the selfish excitement of emulation: you kindly allow me to write poetry for its own sake provided I leave undone nothing which I ought to do in order to pursue that single, absorbing exquisite gratification: I am afraid Sir you think me very foolish — I know the first letter I wrote to you was all senseless trash from beginning to end. But I am not altogether the idle, dreaming being it would seem to denote. (letter to Southey, 16 March 1837)
She closes by thanking Southey for him for answering her first letter and assuring him that his advice will not be wasted. She is gracious and deferential without being obsequious, reflective, and cognizant of her shortcomings, yet secure in her own intelligence and talent.
Jane Eyre was published in October 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell, followed by Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Ellis and Acton Bell, respectively, in December of that year. From the beginning there was much speculation about the identity of the Bells, the authors’ sex, their relationship, whether there were three authors or only one. Jane Eyre achieved immediate commercial success accompanied by some favorable and some dubious reviews. Charlotte’s sisters did not fare so well. Wuthering Heights “was regarded as the product of a dogged, brutal and morose mind,” while Tenant was deemed “insipid, and both were received with indifference.” (Phyllis Bentley, The Brontës)
Digging up contemporary reviews of the Brontës and offering my own take on them would be interesting and the more intellectually responsible course; however, there are limits to the time and resources at the disposal of your oft humbled scribe. With that somewhat lame excuse in hand, I rely on Margaret Smith, editor of Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë, to give an idea of the critical reception received by Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall:
The Scottish advocate James Lorrimer (1818–90) reviewed the three novels in the North British Review for Aug. 1849. He praised Fanny Hervey; or The Mother’s Choice (1849) by Mrs Stirling, gave moderate praise to Anne Marsh’s Emilia Wyndham (1848), considered that she wrote “as an English gentlewoman whould write,” and admitted that, unlike Marsh, Currer Bell [Charlotte] was never tedious. He praised and found fault with JE by turns, finding in it elements of the revolting and improbable, but acquitting the author of the Quarterly‘s charge of vulgarity.
The Economist for 27 Nov. 1847 praised JE enthusiastically. Though the reviewer found some coarseness, and some too-obvious art in construction, he wrote nothing resembling CB’s sentiment here [Charlotte wrote: “I am reminded of 'The Economist.' The literary critic of that paper praised the book if written by a man ― and pronounced it 'odious' if the work of a woman.”].
Lorimer found the faults of JE “magnified a thousand-fold” in WH and Tenant, despite the vivid realism of their sketches of nature “in her rougher moods.” He did not finish reading WH, repelled by a “perfect pandemonium of low and brutal creatures” and disgusting language. Tenant had a better beginning and “poetical justice” at the end, but it brought the reader into “the closest possible proximity with naked vice,” with coarseness never really found in gentlefolk, and a style marked by vulgar slang and provincialisms. (editor’s notes for Charlotte’s letter to William Smith Williams, 16 August 1849; Williams read Jane Eyre for Smith, Elder & Co. and recommended it to George Smith)
To critics who speculated whether the author of Jane Eyre was man or woman and whose evaluation of the novel’s merits and defects was conditioned on the author’s sex, Charlotte was uncompromising:
To such critics I would say ― “to you I am neither Man nor Woman ― I come before you as an Author only ― it is the sole standard by which you have to right to judge me ― the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.”
Anyone whose soul is not a clod, to borrow from Keats, will take seriously criticism and advice offered in good faith. However, it is not a given that it is the critic who gets it right. The onus is on us to weigh that criticism and its source and decide whether and how to act on it. To accept criticism blindly is no better than to reject it blindly. Criticism can present an opportunity to reflect on what we are doing and try to articulate the principles that guide our efforts, and we may thus profit even from criticism that we reject when push comes to shove.
Charlotte’s letters give every indication that this is exactly what she did. As in the exchange with Southey, she is never cowed or intimidated. She acknowledges other points of view, but she stands her ground and holds to her principles. She is, in the words of my old history teacher, a real tough baby.
To the pedestrian advice to write about what she knows, “not to stray too far from the ground of experience,” she answers thoughtfully:
…is not the real experience of each individual very limited? and if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally is he not in danger of repeating himself and also of becoming an egotist?
Then too, Imagination is a strong, restless faculty which claims to be heard and exercised, are we to be quite deaf to her cry and insensate to her struggles? When she shews us bright pictures are we never to look at them and try to reproduce them? ― And when she is eloquent and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear are we not to write to her dictation? (letter to G. H. Lewes, journalist, novelist, dramatist, and writer on philosophy and physiology, 6 November 1847)
Likewise, she minces no words when sharing strongly held views on her literary contemporaries. To Ellen Nussey she recommends Milton, Shakespeare, Thomson, Goldsmith, Pope (though noting that she does not admire him), Scott, Byron, Campbell, Wordsworth, and Southey; “[f]or fiction — read Scott alone all novels after his are worthless. For Biography, read Johnson’s lives of the Poets, Boswell’s life of Johnson.”
She did not care for Jane Austen and compares her unfavorably to George Sand:
Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point.
What induced you to say that you would rather have written “Pride & Prejudice” or “Tom Jones” than any of the Waverly Novels?
I had not seen “Pride & Prejudice” till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book and studied it. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully-fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers ― but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy ― no open country ― no fresh air ― no blue hill ― no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk.
Now I can understand admiration of George Sand ― for though I never saw any of her works which I admired throughout (even “Consuelo” which is the best, or the best I have read, appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous excellence) yet she has a grasp of mind which I cannot fully comprehend. I can very deeply respect; she is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant. (letter to Lewes, 12 January 1848)
She goes further in another letter to Lewes six days later:
You say I must familiarize my mind with the fact that “Miss Austen is not a poetess, has no ‘sentiment’ (you scornfully enclose the word in inverted commas) no eloquence, none of the ravishing enthusiasm of poetry” — and then you add, I must “learn to acknowledge her as one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human character, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to an end that ever lived.”
The last point only will I ever acknowledge. Can there be a great Artist without poetry? What I call — what I will bend to as a great Artist, there cannot be destitute of the divine gift. But by poetry I am sure you understand something different to what I do — as you do by “sentiment.” It is poetry, as I comprehend the word, which elevates that masculine George Sand, and makes out of something coarse, something godlike. It is “sentiment,” in my sense of the term, sentiment jealously hidden, but genuine, which extracts the venom from that formidable Thackeray, and converts what might be only corrosive poison into purifying elixir. If Thackeray did not cherish in his large heart deep feeling for his kind, he would delight to exterminate; as it is, I believe he wishes only to reform.
Miss Austen, being as you say without “sentiment,” without poetry, may be — is sensible (more real than true) but she cannot be great. (to Lewes, 18 January 1848)
Charlotte speaks here of poetry in the sense the Romantics before her and the Surrealists after used the term to suggest some heightened element in a work of art that speaks to us, touches us, moves us, what is also called the sublime or the marvelous. I see in this not a shying away from the world of everyday experience but rather a reawakening of the mystery inherent in it but often forgotten and lost in our daily busyness. Charlotte Brontë stands for an art that is more than just another commodity in the marketplace of amusements and diversions available for our pursuit. She represents an integrity of spirit and art whose example we might cherish in a time where notions of spirit and art are too often trivialized, reduced to the narcissitic commonplaces of a therapeutic culture or to brain chemistry or to goods to be bought and sold the same as automobiles and houses, video games and sexy lingerie.
David :: Apr.25.2010 :: House Red: Literary and Intellectual :: No Comments »