The distinction of prose and verse touches only the surface of literature. It is a distinction of rhythm. All literary language is rhythmic, but there is a difference: the rhythms of verse are recurrent rhythms, and force themselves on the attention; the rhythm of prose, on the contrary, is veiled rhythm. The rhythms that go to make verse may be determined by rhyme and number of syllables, as in English; or by syllabic quantity, as in Latin and Greek; or by parallelism of clauses, as in Biblical and other literatures; or by alliteration, as in Early English: but in all cases there is recurrence of the determining factor which makes the rhythm unmistakable. When verse is written, or printed, the eye assists the ear: there is division into lines of verse, which indicate the recurring rhythms on the principle that similar lines are similarly indented. The word 'prose,' on the contrary, has the etymological meaning of 'straightforward': there is no break in the straightforward writing of the passage to indicate anything about rhythm. The trained ear catches a rhythm in prose, the beauty of which is that it is never obtrusive. It should be added, that the rhythmic difference of verse and prose is a difference of degree: the two can approach one another until they almost meet. Though the verse of Martin Tupper and Walt Whitman is printed in lines, yet there is a freedom of movement in the separate lines which brings the effect of the whole near to that of prose. On the other hand, passages of highly rhetorical prose, such as what is called 'euphuism,' show a recurrence of parallel clauses which comes close to the rhythm of verse, and readily lends itself to printing in lines. Although Iron the more it is used the brighter it is, yet Silver with much wearing doth waste to nothing: Though the Cammock the more it is bowed the better it serveth, yet the Bow the more it is bent and occupied the weaker it waxeth; Though the Camomile the more it is trodden and pressed down yet the Violet the oftener it is handled and touched the sooner it withereth and decayeth. To the distinction of prose and verse the sister art of music shows a close parallel in its distinction between recitative and time bars. Bars divide music as lines divide verse, the rhythm of successive bars being recurrent. In recitative there are no dividing bars; yet the quantity of the notes-as minims, crotchets, quavers-imply a rhythm that is real, though not obtrusive. The distinction of prose and poetry, on the other hand, goes down to the essential meaning and matter of literature. 'Poet' is a Greek word which signifies one who makes or creates something; the English poets used to be called 'makers.' A certain verse in the Epistle to the Ephesians (2:10) is translated in our Bibles, "We are God's workmanship"; the Greek original gives it, "We are God's poem." As God is the supreme Maker and Creator of the universe, and we are what God has created and made, so the poet is the creator of an imaginary universe, which he fills with imagined personages and incidents. Shakespeare is a poet by virtue of the fact that he has created a Hamlet, a Julius Caesar, a Battle of Agincourt; the Homeric poems create an Achilles, a Trojan War. There may have been an historical Achilles, as there certainly was an historic Julius Caesar: but the Shakespearean Julius Caesar, the Homeric Achilles, are independent creations, which may or may not agree with the historic counterparts. Poetry thus adds to the sum of existences; the world is the richer by so many personalities and incidents when the poets have completed their work. In precisely the same way Dickens creates a Micawber and a Pickwick; our novels add to the sum of existences by the imagined life they create. Modern novels, just as much as the Iliad and Odyssey, are in the fullest sense poetry. In opposition to this, the literature to be called prose shows no such act of creation; prose is limited to the discussion of what already exists. If a philosopher or historian, in his work of discussing the world of actualities, should indicate a single detail as existing which in fact had no existence, he would so far have ceased to be historian or philosopher, and would have passed into the domain of poetic creation. If, however, this fundamental conception of poetry and prose is to be held firm amid the confusion which has beset the usage of the terms, the reader will do well to fix in his mind this simple fact of literary history. The great bulk of ancient poetry is in verse. The great bulk of modern poetry is in prose. When the criticism which had fallen into the confusion between poetry and verse encountered the clear fact that the same act of creation belongs to novels in prose and to epic poems, it sought to meet the difficulty by using a different word'fiction'-to express creation in prose. 'Fiction' is simply the Latin counterpart to the Greek word 'poetry.' But this is an evasion of the issue. It breaks down at once: obviously, it does not meet the case of Shakespeare and other authors whose creative works pass backward and forward from prose to verse and verse to prose. Moreover, it ignores a fundamental fact of literary history. It is not disputed that literature at a certain stage tends to express everything-science as well as imaginative creation-in verse; at another stage its tendency is to express everything-imaginative creation as well as sciencemore commonly in prose than in verse. It is, of course, quite a separate question whether, when poetry is expressed in verse, the verse may not react on the creation, and modify it in some way. If this be so, then we must seek some modifying terms to indicate two different types of poetry. We are none the more excused from bringing our usage of terms into conformity with the literary facts; if the same act of creative imagination goes to make the novel and the epic or drama of antiquity, the whole must be recognized as poetry.1 These four things, description and presentation, poetry and prose, are the four cardinal points of literary form. They are not to be conceived as four kinds of literature; but, like the cardinal points of the compass, they represent four necessary directions in which literary activity can move. Literature, developing from its starting-point in the ballad dance, finds its movement bounded in these four directions. The result of the movement so bounded gives us the six elements of literary form. The mutual relation of these elements is indicated by Chart I on page 18, to which the reader is now referred. Literature developing from the ballad dance moves in a certain direction and produces epic: its position in our chart indicates how this is creative poetry, in which the creation is conveyed by the mode of narration and description. Epic includes, as we have seen, alike the ancient verse narrative and the modern novel. Of the three constituents that made the ballad dance only speech is essential to epic: the earlier epic recitations 'On this important and tangled question a valuable discussion will be found in Professor Gummere's Beginnings of Poetry (Crowell), chapter ii. Mr. Gummere comes to a different conclusion from mine. But I would point out that his discussion seems in the main to be concerned with the usage of the term 'poetry': as to this, no doubt, the majority of authorities is on his side. I am concerned with the principles of literary theory; and I think a firm stand should be made against the traditional error. I return to this subject below, pp. 232-34. |