,
BO 0 KS
III
It is a simple objection tha t I have to make against BIackmur;
with the reservation, of course, that I pick him up where he did not
perhaps mean the inference which I draw from the aesthetic rule he has
recited so many times. No faith, no passion of any kind, is originated
in a poem ; it is brought into the poem by the technical process of
"imitating" life (to use Aristotle's term); it is the fact which is the
heart of the fiction. I have seen it said that the poem is a place where
the fact is turned loose, to see what it will do, in the labora tory of
the scrupulous rational imagination. But I should doubt if there is any–
thing in this empiricistic rigor. Ordinarily, I imagine, the faith is
brought into the poem a little bigger than natural, but not quite too
big for the furthest reach of the believer; in order tha t it may be con–
finned there. The experiment is slightly rigged. But the effect
IS
nearly as good ; and it is a very human sort of thing to try.
I conclude with another objection associa ted with this one. I
have not quoted the passages where Blackmur on behalf of poetry is
discomfited when intruders with a haggard look break into the poem,
take hold of the intellectual ideas, the faith, the principle of order,
and bear them away to use in their own affairs. He is a little ungener–
ous in the name of poetry. Though they abstracted something, they did
not thieve ; the poem is intact. BIackmur understands this very well,
and perhaps his real point is that the marauders claim to have taken
something from the poem which was not there at all. I cannot agree.
At any rate they are punished by lacking all the other things which
they did not try to take from the poem and which they did not know
were there. What these things are, it is the burden of Blackmur's big
book to disclose.
It is my understanding that other collections of Blackmur's super–
lative essays are to follow this one ; and presently, a book of those he
has lately been writing about fi ction. It has been my notion that Black–
mur as a good humanist was not content with the pure aesthetic or
formal values he found created so abundantly within the organization
of the poem; and finally felt obliged to talk directly about those ideas,
morals, faith s, which enter into the conduct of life. They seemed to
him to be explicit in fi ction as they were not in poetry. For it is a com–
monplace to discuss the ideas of fiction substantively; so that critics
of poetry are always urging critics of fiction not to forget that there
are also the formal values, even in fiction . But I should venture to
tum this round . Is it not possible for the critics of poetry to forget that
there are substantive as well as formal values in the poem?
John Crowe Ransome
