VARIETY
couplet · is
in the abstract
superior
to iambic pentameter because the
close rhyming makes possible a
more exact expression of moral
feeling. Proceeding in this way,
with little caution and no doubts,
Winters proves that Edith Whar–
ton is superior to Henry James, T.
Sturge Moore and Robert Bridges
are better poets than Yeats and
Eliot, and · Wallace Stevens is a
hedonist.
Winters' choices of great modern
poems are significant in the same–
ness of their subjects; again and
again, some statement or hint in
the midst of a well-described land–
scape that man is a rational animal
wins his favor, provided that it is
neatly written in quatrains. And it
is in dealing with subject-matter
141
that Winter exhibits the worst
kind of didacticism. In his attack
on Eliot, he becomes overwrought
about the idea that a literary work
ought to hold up a mirror to nature
and to the age in which it is writ–
ten. The trouble is that Winters
takes this to mean that the purpose
of a literary work is
merely
to give
1·epresentation to the Zeitgeist
or
to the surface of an age. What
Winters fails to see is how the op–
posite process is in question. An
author's use of particulars and sur–
faces is an effort to support his
leading attitudes and motives by
giving them deep roots in experi–
ence. Without such roots, the au–
thor is guilty of what James called
"the platitude of mere statement."
The point is a crucial one and
one which enters profoundly into
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