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PARTISAN REVIEW
people who refused to cheat, who eagerly sought out the truth and
shrank from neither poetry nor terror, the two poles of our globe-since
poetry does exist in the world, in certain events, at rare moments. And
there's also no shortage of terror.
BUT THAT BOY WHO DISCOVERED that you can make up your own
prayers, you don't always need a prayerbook, would also come to
understand with time that a church isn't the only place where you may
find divinity.
WITOLD GOMBROWICZ'S attack on poetry
(Against Poets)
doesn't rank
among the harshest accusations leveled against poets in this century.
Gombrowicz's essay is more along the lines of a family squabble: the
poet-in-prose takes his lyrical brethren to task chiefly for condensing
their poems too much, for adding too much sugar to their pastries.
But Gombrowicz's argument deals mainly with poetry's reception,
and not with its essence. True, there are periods when poetry seems to
offer overly rich fare ("too sweet"). The moments when we're prepared
to accept and comprehend poetic intensity come along rarely. But the
same is true of painting and music; only film entices us on a daily basis
by promising a release from our ordinary indifference.
The English Puritan Stephen Gosson was far more radical, passion–
ate, and primitive in his pamphlet
The School of Abuse.
Gosson argued
that poets demoralize the reading public and are in fact no better than
rope dancers and wandering actors (and we all know what to expect
from them!). Gosson's attack-undertaken in the sixteenth century–
would doubtless have been forgotten if it hadn't prompted a far more
gifted author to take up the Puritan's charges . This gifted writer was, of
course, Sir Philip Sidney, who wrote both verse and prose until his pre–
mature death, and who was also one of poetry's greatest champions: his
Defence of Poesie
is a classic of English literature. Sidney defends
poetry, inspired poetry-and inspiration is a gift from the gods! - whose
finest achievements overshadow those of both philosophy and history.
Sidney'S treatise, published posthumously in 1595, defends the imagi–
nation and insists that it serves good, not evil, ends.
Anyone who's ever been deeply engaged in works of the imagination
will know what
I
have in mind : that moment when, after a long period
