BOO KS
l6S
down the butterfly, somewhat in the general manner in which Ran–
som once took apart Shakespeare's sonnets; but he is too intelligent,
and too good-humored in his intelligence, to continue the process too
far. The point is that the mix'ed metaphor, the quickly darting images,
uneven syntax and odd diction, all are parts of a legitimate style–
not the greatest and grandest style, to be sure, but a perfectly genuine
one nevertheless. These poems are like brief shooting stars, breathless
in the intense moment of their experience, and not to be disprized for
those other stars in their orderly courses shining with a steady and
more controlled brilliance. Emily was a woman, all feeling, and we
can hardly expect from her the masculine logic that might have organ–
ized those feelings into greater poetic structures. When Mr. Chase
analyzes the famous little poem "The Train" and concludes that the
miraculous image in the last qua train, "punctual as a star," has "noth–
ing to do with the poem at all," he is succumbing to the demon of
logic that vitiates Yvor Winters' brilliant Dickinson essay in
Maule's
Curse,
and to some extent R. P. Blackmur's in his
Expense of Great–
ness.
This is perhaps not a private lapse on the part of these critics,
but a fault that flows from a culture no longer able to deal directly
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THE SCHOOL OF LETTERS
Indiana University
June
19 -
August 1
Graduate courses offered by the Fellows in the 1952 session:
John Crowe Ransom.
Keats, with a Brief Consideration of Shelley
Leslie Fiedler.
Myth in American Fiction and Verse
Francis Fergusson.
Readings in the Purgatorio
R. P. Blackmur.
Fiction: Stendhal, James, Joyce, Gide
Robert Fitzgerald.
Virgil and the Virgilian Tradition
Kenneth Burke.
Language as Symbolic Action
Randall Jarrell.
Some Modern Poets
Harold Whitehall and Archibald Hill.
Language-Literature Seminar
(Given jointly by the Linguistic Institute and the School.)
The School of Letters is a continuation of the Kenyon School of English, with the
addition that an M.A. degree can
be
taken. For a bulletin, address the Director,
RICHARD
B.
HUDSON
BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA
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