the art and the craft

Irish Review (Dublin)

The Art and the CraftAuthor(s): Thomas MacDonaghSource: The Irish Review (Dublin), Vol. 1, No. 11 (Jan., 1912), pp. 557-559Published by: Irish Review (Dublin)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30062787 .

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The Art and the Craft

Bly T'HOMAS Mfac) ONAGH

A SONNET by Lord Alfred Douglas, the current number of The Academy, and Mr. Joseph M. Plunkett's first book, The Circle and the Sword.* Lord Alfred's sonnet is that which gives the

title to his volume The City of the Soul:

" In the salt terror of a stormy sea There are high altitudes the mind forgets; And undesired days are hunting nets To snare the souls that fly eternity."

The images are shadows of shadows. It is a poetry not merely unreal--weaving things out of vain abstractions-but of false imagination, affected, insincere. No doubt the author thought that he meant it all, that he " wot of" it all, to use his own phrase, as well as of " the honeyed utterance of silvern flutes," and the " citherns " and the rest; but if he did so, it was because he had hypnotised himself into a state of quasi- imagination by book poetry which is a mirror of a mirror of something which cast a shadow very long ago. By its words will you know this poetry, by its archaisms, by its mock-poetic phrases, phrases which began by being poetic, but could never be so more than once. The true poet exalts by use a prose phrase which has in it the good names of common things, the good definitions of common acts. But the merely poetic phrase, once fallen into use, no poet shall again exalt. And, fallen, the poetic phrases cling together ; they will be found piled up and clustering in the sonnet of a poetaster-in such a sonnet as one in this current issue of The Academy :

" Beyond the heights of heaven and depths of hell, Resistless as the fierce unfettered sea, And broader than the sky's infinity, Outreaching spheres where joy and sorrow dwell.

Such is the love which thou hast thought to quell." * Published by Messrs. Maunsel & Co., Dublin.

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THE IRISH REVIEW

In The Cirtle and the Sword, which is the only Irish volume of verse among the twenty-nine on the list of books received in the same Academy, Mr. Joseph M. Plunkett also has " Hell's depth and Heaven's height." He has the silver flutes of Lord Alfred Douglas. He has cymars and other rare things. He makes use of some archaisms. Some of his poems are altogether obscure. But his work is in the main so strong and so clear that one thinks of these things and, in connection with them, of the vague and diffuse sonnets from which I have quoted, only as foils. He is perhaps the youngest of published Irish poets. He will come to a more concentrated power. A young poet takes for known and seen by others things apparent to him only. He begins by being the sedr. He becomes the interpreter and so the maker, when he learns to express the creature of his vision as it must inevitably be expressed for himself, and in a code known to others too. But it is better that a young poet should have a vision and express it only for himself than that he should have only the conventional novel things worn by all the poetic of his time. He sets too high a value on the secret phases of his vision. The best is that which is universal. The poet finds himself when he gives himself.

Like all the men and matters of the universe, poets may be divided into two classes, those who begin by being accomplished and come to power along the road which leads to straight simplicity, and those who begin by stammering, those who have slowly to master the craft. Mr. Plunkett is of the former class. He is amazingly accomplished. Yet it is safe to prophesy that he will never produce work of what may be called Art for Craft's sake. He will come rather to see that craft and technique and all the creatures of prosody are only the hand maidens of poetry. He has probably come to see it already: however un- common the vision, there is no mere word-weaving in such verse as this :

"The ground has grown transparent, I can see The damned in Hell that leap amid the flames In the earth's centre 'neath my feet, the names Of legions of lost angels-dazzlingly The sun shines through the solid earth nor shames For want of miracle, the faith in me."

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THE ART AND THE CRAFT

Of a different mood are the lyrics:

"White love of the wild, dark eyes," and

" O Love, my song Is sung to the trembling string Of love's own lyre."

and the others--different, yet of the same gravity of youth, for again poets begin with solemnity. Which is not, thank God, to say that The Circle and the Sword is a book of tears and death. But its author has not yet fulfilled his promise to

" Tell of adventures by the way, Robberies, rescues, hunger-then Of conversations day by day

With gods-or gentlemen."

The higher promise of the opening sonnets he has fulfilled; his "Epitome " is no vain boast. It is, as I have said, better that the reach should exceed the grasp-" What else is a heaven for ? " This poetry aspires. It is sincere mysticism.

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the art and the craft

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