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PARTISAN REVIEW
speak to the king and the dead can truly communicate with the
living: all categories of creatures can rejoice together there. To pre–
serve and to enlarge the rejoicing categories of created things
is
the
duty of the poet. This is why I am more moved by the poetry of
Shakespeare than by the poetry of Dante or anyone else : the
creatures and creations that rejoice together in their communion of
being are larger and more human and more numerous in Shake–
speare than
in
those of any other poet. He is almost the only one
whose characters could have had toothache without absurdity.
I conclude with a note I should have made at the start.
It
is
trite and obvious but necessary, like going to France. Much exquisite
poetry has been written in the thin air of an isolated study-Thomas
Gray is an example. But such poetry is essentially incestuous: it has
the effete loveliness of the ancient Egyptian dynasties. Much of
Mil–
ton seems to have been written about a phantasmagoria that took
place in his chambers: figures, remote and unreal, but possessing a
kind of artificial animation, move about with the dignity and blood–
lessness of automata, tremendous and dead : it is the poetry of the
intellect alone. But poetry is also an affair of the human
animal.
The first poem ever written was the first syllable ever uttered. And
to keep the poem walking among men, to induce it to move
in
the heart and the bone as well as the head, is not to say that poetry
must be written for the million, although it may be. It
is
simply
this: Poetry at bottom is not, as Matthew Arnold insisted it was, a
criticism of life. Religion is a criticism of life. Poetry at bottom is an
acceptance of life. And if it comes to this acceptance of life, you
will see what an extremely greedy man William Shakespeare was.
He accepted the whole cake. And he ate it, too.
