DENIS DONOGHUE
3S
in the remainder of "rrom Poe to Valery" Eliot gave a damaging
account of Poe's poetry and hi') theory of poetic composition: the only
merit Poe had, apparently, was that he somehow inspired Baudelaire,
Mallarme, and Valery, and permitted Valery to regard the act of com–
position as more interesting than the poem that results from it.
On the question of the auditory imagination, I never tried to clarify
my position with Davie. Many of the poems I most cared for were prod–
ucts of that imagination, and were intimate with verbal magic, the
caress of syllables, the echoes and recesses of words. Now that it's too
late, I'll try to put together a few considerations that might have modi–
fied his impatience. [ could have quoted this passage from Eliot's "Note
sur Mallarme et Poe":
Chez Poe et Mallarmc la philosophic est en partie remplacee par un
clement
d'incantation.
Dans "Ulalume" par exemple, et dans "Un
Coup de Des," cette incantation, qui insiste sur la puissance prim–
itive du Mot (Fatum), est manifeste. En ce sens Ie vers de Mallarme,
qui s'applique si bien
a
lui-meme, constitue une brillante critique de
Poe:
donner
U1/
sens plus pllr aI/x 1110ts de la tribu.
L'effort pour
restiruer la puissance du Mot, qui inspire la syntaxe de I'un et de
I'autre et leur fait ecarter Ie son ore pur ou Ie pur melodieux (qu'i1s
pourraient, tous les deux, s'ils Ie voulaient, si bien exploiter), cet
effort, qui cmpcche Ie lecteur
J'oualer d'ull coup
leur phrase ou leur
vers, cst une Jes qualites qui rapprochent Ie mieux les deux poetes.
II
ya aussi la fcrmete de leur pas lorsqu'i1s passent du mondc tan–
gible au monde dcs fantOmcs.
But I'm not sure that Davie would have been open to persuasion on the
primitive power of the Word, even with the addition of the parentheti–
cal Fatum. Eliot evidently had in mind the Word in an entirely secular
sense, not the Word of God as it was to be invoked three years later in
"Ash-Wednesday." What else can that be but verbal magic, the
resources of charms and runes? The firmness of step with which Poe and
Mallarme moved from the tangible world to the world of phantoms is
an odd assertion, unless Eliot has in view the abeyance of will, a poet's
trust-short of confidence or certitude-in the power of language
rather than the power of the self. Or a poet's conviction that language
is the most reliable source of authority, because the most impersonal.
When he became an Anglican, Eliot construed the Word in its religious
sense, and resorted to it as prayer, ritual and liturgical observance, all
the more vital for its traditional and sacramental repetition. But he did
