ROMANTICISM AND MODERN POETRY
631
Russian. Along with this, Mr. Bowra has a genuine enthusiasm for the
poets he discusses, a considerable knowledge of the history of many
literatures, and a desire to instil the reader with some of the unforced
catholicity of his own taste. Moreover, his quiet, unpretentious tone is
especially pleasing at the present time, when it has become the fashion
for literary critics to confuse their function with that of a religious
prophet.
So far as the limitations are concerned, we may sum them up by
saying that Mr. Bowra writes essentially "introductory" criticism. It is
excellent for giving an overall initial impression of a writer ; but unsat–
isfactory to anyone looking for detailed thematic explorations, fresh
insights or new critical perspectives. In general, Mr. Bowra is reluctant
to become involved in complex critical or aesthetic problems. He prefers,
instead, to reduce them to a commonsense level, reassuring the reader,
as he does so, that these matters are much simpler than might be thought
at first sight. Unfortunately, he carries this attitude so far, in some cases,
that the problems lose much of their real significance. These limitations,
though, are no doubt inherent in the task that Mr. Bowra seems to have
set for himself- the task of acting as a critical middleman between the
highbrow reading public and the scholarly specialist, particularly in the
area of foreign literatures. As such, he performs a valuable and needed
service, well illustrated by the two books we are now considering.
The essays in
The Creative Experiment,
as Mr. Bowra tells us,
were written as "a kind of sequel" to
The H eritage of Symbolism,
and
attempt "to sketch some main figures and characteristics of the poetry
which succeeded that of the post-Symbolists and has played an important
part in Europe since 1910." In his first chapter, Mr. Bowra sets out to
define the similarities in technique and attitude which set apart these
poets both from their immediate predecessors, the post-Symbolists, as
well as from nineteenth-century Romanticism and Symbolism. The Sym–
bolists, he says, aimed at "purity" in their poetry; they "excluded any–
thing rhetorical or didactic or ethical on the grounds that it was neces–
sarily unpoetical." The moderns, going further, aim "at a poetry which
is pure in the sense that it gives a special kind of thrill which
is
re–
garded as the essential function of poetry and distinguishes it from any–
thing else." In passing, Mr. Bowra refers to Nietzsche's "famous distinc–
tion between the Apollonian and the Dionysian elements in poetry," and
observes that "the moderns tend toward the Dionysian outlook."
These remarks, so far as they go, can hardly be quarreled with,
although we should have liked to know exactly what Mr. Bowra means
by "purity" or by "thrill," and to learn precisely the sense in which
