The Future of Poetry

BY VINJAMURI KRISHNAMACHARI, M.A.
(Research Scholar, Benares University)

POETRY is declining. It is already on the way to decadence. Before long it will die out. The fountain of song has dried up now. The soil that fed it has become sterile. The mighty tree is withering at the root. Poetry is undergoing a process of disintegration. The fond hope, cherished by many, of its revival may never be fulfilled. The conditions that inspired the muse and favoured its growth through centuries are no more.

The primitive mind created poetry and art. The modern culture-creating mind is occupied in banishing poetry from our world. With the advance of civilisation, there is taking place in our natures, perhaps without our knowing, a change that is more or less fundamental. The impact of science on our world has precipitated a revolution, changing the whole face of the earth for us. Psychologists, who hold that the fundamental psychic structure of the primitive and the cultured man is one and unchangeable, testify to “a change of attitude on our part.”¹ The main focus of our attention is transferred wholly to material reality. We have turned away our interest from the subjective to the objective, from creating art and myth to discriminating objects,–emphasising the importance of material things at the expense of things of spirit, such as art, myth, and religion.

Poetry was born out of wonder and mystery. The primitive caveman, dizzy with a sense of rapture, conceived the best poetry; the Vedic poet, viewing the wonders of the great creation with the eyes of the child, poured out a series of incantations. The sense of the ‘numinous,’ that dim sense of something tremendous in the world about us, something awful and majestic–‘mysterious Tremendum’ is the very basis of poetry. The primitive man had a child’s mind, with a child’s wonder. He was constantly in a state of astonishment and awe as he faced the mysteries of nature. The naive man of antiquity saw in everything living presences. The Sun was a god; Dawn a young and a beautiful maiden on a golden chariot;² the Earth the ‘ancient mother.’ Living, as he did, perpetually under the thrill of the mysterious, the primitive created art, myth, and religion.

The primitive loved fantasies. The world of reality, the processes of nature, were to him cold and lifeless; they had no warmth and glow. Consequently myth was welcomed. He peopled his world with fairies and spirits. He lived in a subjective, fantastical universe of his own creation. “He grasped the world by intuition and expressed it by fantasy,”³ the energy and interest which today we put into science and technique, the man of antiquity gave in part to mythology. This myth making of the primitive gave birth to the richest poetry. “This fantastical activity of the ancient mind created artistically par excellence,”⁴ e.g. the richness and immense power of life of Grecian mythology.

Poetry is the visionary attitude of the mind. It is distinct from the faculty that produced the sciences.⁵ Poetic thought is associative, involuntary, and effortless. It is a thinking in images, akin to dreaming or fantasy-thinking. The primitive mentality had a dislike of reasoning, of voluntary or purposive thought. Directed thinking was a tiresome pursuit, an ordeal. Hence it turned naturally to fantasy, to the attractive dreamy world of myths and fairy-tales. The primitive, like the child, was uncritical and undiscriminating. He thought for the most part in images, and hence lived in the imagination. He swallowed fantastic tales and offered mythical explanations of natural phenomena. To him poetry and science were one; they were contained in the myth. He had no concept of a law-regulated nature. The affairs of the world were carried on by supernatural powers; nature was governed by occult forces. ⁶ The primitive lived in a world that had a richer content than ours. It was a magic mystical world. “The antique spirit created not science but mythology.” ⁷ Mythology interpenetrated the life of the primitive, whereas the modern man spends his time mainly in voluntary thought. “Directed thinking is a modern acquisition, the manifest instrument of culture.”⁸ Science is its expression.

Science is an obstacle to imagination. The rising on the sun causes us no astonishment,–we know that it happens necessarily. The analysing scientific mind has stripped Nature of its mystery. Wordsworth presented the activities of the ‘meddling intellect’ which ‘murders to dissect’ and ‘botanizes on its mother’s grave.’ The advent of rational consciousness, the latest and the greatest achievement of man, marked the end of the ‘mythologising’ era. Myth or fantasy is the projection of the psyche into the world of objects. It is a subjective emotional attitude, in which the subject and the object interpenetrate one another. In the undifferentiated world of the primitive, dream and reality mingled, “the psychic and the objective coalesced in the external world.” Even the things the primitive dreamed about seemed to him real. “The modern culture-creating mind is incessantly occupied in stripping off all subjectivity from experience.”⁹ We have learned to distinguish what is subjective and psychic from what is objective and ‘natural,’ to keep our emotions from colouring our perceptions. ¹⁰ Science has bred abstract thinking; it is working the gradual ‘depersonification of myth;’¹¹ concrete image is replaced by a set of abstract symbols. “Directed thinking has taken the place of fantastic thinking, which, however, remains as a survival.”

Poetry has its roots in a deep unconscious source. It is ‘above and beyond consciousness.’ It is the record of the unconscious. In the realm of poetry, “the confines of the waking world blend with those of the world of dreams.” “The true poet dreams while being awake. Poetry is a sort of dream world. Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, De Quincey were all great dreamers. Poetry and dreams are the product of the same imaginative operation.” Coleridge’s imaginations were dream-like; Kubla Khan is a dream vision.¹² Poetry had its origin in the primitive dream-like way of thinking. In poetry, as in dream, we have a reversion to a more primitive type of experience. The poet is a highly developed mind working in a primitive way. The dream-like imagination of the primitive constantly produced myths.” Myth is the dream of a people; dream is the myth of an individual.¹³ Myth is the product of fantasy. “Myths are dreams and they are poetry.”¹⁴ Myth-making or imaginative creation is the essence of the poetic substance. Poets and savages belong to the same brotherhood. They are the children of imagination. Poetry thus is the outcome of the processes of the unconscious. It proceeds from that ‘misty realm, that vast unknown.’ In poetry, as in dream, the unconscious wells up from the deep buried sources; the gulf between the superficial limited conscious mind and the vast unconscious is bridged. The function of poetry is to withdraw the consciousness from the perceptual world into the world of fantasy, “to hold the mind suspended in the state of trance, in which the mind, liberated from the pressure of the will, is unfolded in symbols.” Poetic experience consists in a temporary return to the unconscious. Conscious activities suspended, the senses held in abeyance, the ‘inner vision’ becomes alert, ‘with a, flash’ revealing ‘the invisible world’; the human spirit is in the paradise of the unconscious.

One of the dubious gifts of civilisation is the growth of consciousness. Civilisation, with the complex problems it presents to the human mind, brings the possibility’” of a widening of consciousness. Problems force us to greater consciousness and separate us from the paradise of the unconscious childhood. The psychic life of the civilised man is made up of doubts, reflections, experiments–all of which are almost foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. We are saying good-bye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in Nature. The primitive lived natural, instinctive life. Instinct is nature, unconsciousness; culture is consciousness. The primitive has not progressed as far in consciousness as the cultured man; he has not lost contact with his unconscious to anything like the extent that civilised man has lost it.¹⁵ Our culture consist in our turning away from instinct, our opposing ourselves to instinct,–that creates consciousness. We are drifting farther away from our unconscious, tearing ourselves loose from it.¹⁶ “The Biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse.”¹⁷ We are enjoying the fruits of knowledge “at the sacrifice of the natural mar, the unconscious, ingenuous being” in us.

Consciousness is fatal to poetic creation. It is a sign of artistry. Poems written consciously, and deliberately are not real poetry, but only wit, satire, or philosophy, e.g. Pope, because the mystery is not there. “The artificial is the conscious, mechanical; the natural is the unconscious, dynamical. Unconsciousness is the sign of creation; consciousness at best that of manufacture.” ¹⁸

With primitives, poetry was part of their natures–not a fine art merely! Art was something that came natural to them, into which their lives were inseparably woven. For them art and life were not separate but one. To the primitive mind, consciousness was a strain. Their minds turned naturally to art and myth-making. The primitive orgy and dancing ceremonies afforded them relief by throwing them into the subconscious world of fantasy. When he performed rites, ceremonies of drinking and worship the savage was seized with the ‘religious thrill.’ His limited consciousness, attained by so much effort and privation, disappeared. “In the wild transport of the mimetic dance, the savages lost consciousness of the external world and plunged into the subconsciouss, inner world of fantasy.” Primitive poetry sprang spontaneously from life. Nature was its inspiration. To the primitive, poetry was not an art, acquired and cultivated, but a habit of the mind. He lived naturally in it. The primitives were all poets to some extent; their common speech was poetical, their conversation tending at every step to twist into poetry. Ancient poetry was never composed like ours with pen, paper, and deliberation. It was improvised, poured out in a gush, ‘a spontaneous overflow of feelings.’ Rig-Veda was a mighty improvisation. Its poets conceived it in a trance. With us, poetry is seldom, if ever, improvised. It is a matter of pen and paper. Our poetry is a written art, more difficult than common speech, demanding a higher degree of conscious deliberation. “It is no affair of inaspiration but only of intellectual masonry.” Poetry has moved away from us, has lost its intimate relation to our lives; it is a fine art, a luxury, the special talent of a gifted few. ¹⁹

To the primitive peoples religion and poetry were born one. Poetry merged with religion. Poetry has grown out of religion. The Rig-Vedic hymns are invocations and adoration of gods. They are “a simple out-pouring of the heart, a prayer to the eternal, an invitation to them to accept favourably the gift, reverently consecrated.” Religion is the matrix of poetry. It was the religious thrill that inspired the best poetry in the world. True poetry, like religion, strikes the devotional chord in our hearts and satisfies the universal neurotic longing of humanity for the Father: God.²⁰ Tagore’s Gitanjali is deeply and profoundly religious at the core. In it religion and poetry fuse and become one. Its very religiousness is its poetic element. The Poet’s spirit of self-dedication and self-surrender has inspired the sublimest utterances–self-surrender to the eternal Master, the cry of the soul for union with its Father: God. If the core of truth in a religion is man’s intuition of dependence, the same sense of dependence, with a powerful yearning to wipe out one’s identity and merge in the infinite universe, in a holy communion with the eternal spirit, is what imparts to poetry the depth and ecstasy that belong to it. The poet and the mystic experience it in their profoundest moods. Poetry that prides itself upon man’s supremacy or exults in his conquests must, of necessity, be, like Kipling’s Marching Measures and patriotic poems, shallow, and lack the quality of mystery. Poetry is an emotional attitude towards the world. That our ancients produced the greatest poetry is purely the result of their mystical and emotional outlook. A sort of emotional halo encircled the ways of our forefathers. This emotional basis, again, arose from their helplessness, their sense of insecurity and dependence upon supernatural powers. Science has given us a sense of security and taught us self-confidence; the work of civilisation has rid our minds of weakness and helplessness. Culture is enabling man to get over the ‘neurotic phase’.²¹ Religion is dying, leaving a great vacuum in the life of man. The sea of Faith is retreating; we hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar!

“With consciousness appears individuality.” ²² Individuality is a limitation, even a sin, in the realm of art. “The secret of artistic creation is to be found in a return to the state of ‘participation Mystique,’ to that level of experience at which it is man who lives and not the individual.”²³ True poetry is a reflection of the common, unconscious psychic life of mankind. Every step towards a fuller consciousness removes us farther from our ‘participation Mystique’ with the mass of men, from the common unconsciousness. Modern poetry is highly individualised, the work of a highly individualised society, while primitive poetry was the product of a whole community.²⁴ Labour songs, popular ballads, peasant tunes, express the aspirations of the community; they took their origin in the primitive substance of the human consciousness. Poetry and song, in the primitive societies, were composed to celebrate the realisation of communal desires. To the primitives, poetry was a necessity; it subserved a vital social function. It was needed to direct the instinctive energy of the tribe into trains of collective actions. The group-festival freed the stores of emotion and canalised them in a collective channel.²⁵ Thus poetry was part and parcel of the communal life of the people. Poetic thought is the product of the common mind. The poet in his poetic moments retires into a subconscious world, less individualised than his waking conscious life, and expresses that which is common to him and his fellowmen. Arnold insisted on ‘elementary feelings’, the great primary human affections. Wordsworth went to rustic life for poetic themes, because in that condition of life “our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity.” Modern poetry is tending to become eccentric; individual idiosyncrasies find a prominent place in it.

“Primitivity is an early stage of development, a racial childhood.”²⁶ The human race is passing from a stage in which in man’s life emotion and intuition play a large role, and in which the world of imagination is the world of reality, to a stage in which reasoning becomes a natural and an almost continuous occupation of the human mind. As the race evolves, human intellect succeeds in gaining primacy over the instincts. Each modern child also passes through this stage of dreams and fantasies on his way to the world of real objects and ideas. In this, the child is recapitulating the development of the race.²⁷ The child begins with poetry. Its mind, like the savage’s, is imaginative and constantly producing myths; its perception is emotional. When the child, on seeing dew on the grass, exlaims, “the grass is crying”, its expression is poetical. The child and the poet partake of the same nature; in fact in poetry we have a reversion to the mental state of the child. “The poets are men who still see with the eyes of childhood.” The poet is an imaginative child, “who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood.” But the child has soon to learn prose. As the practical and social life develops, as the adaptation to reality proceeds, imaginative vision gives way to ratiocination. In the grown man, it is relegated to a second place and held rigorously in check. In infancy the inner vision, imagination, is uppermost; in manhood, it is subjected to external sense. ²⁸ In the Ode on Immortality, Wordsworth speaks of the gradual deterioration of the mind from its early ideals–the progress of life from birth to manhood and the gradual fading of the ‘clouds of glory’–the passing away of the visionary ideal charm of childhood into ‘the light of common day’. What is true of the individual human child is true of the race. Poetry is the fine flower of the racial childhood of man. “As civilisation advances, poetry, almost necessarily declines.” Milton complained that he was born in an age too late. The modern poet has to “struggle against the spirit of the age.” That is why the age of Elizabeth was so prolific, why the romantic writers turned to the Middle Ages, why modern poets go to the Greeks, the golden age of imagination, for material and inspiration. Primitive poetry was the best poetry. In the folk-lore, peasant songs, popular ballads, poetry survives in something like its primitive natural simplicity. The best poetry is unwritten, it lives on the lips of the people. While the ‘Kathas’ (epic songs) of Andhra are specimens of genuineness and simplicity, its best poems are not free form the taint of sophistication. We are in the age of science. We can no more expect a poet of the present day to equal Shakespeare.

“Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now the glory and the dream?”

In my school-days I read The Home and the World by Tagore and spent sleepless nights brooding over “the pity of it, O! the pity of it!” A year ago, I read it again and preserved my presence of mind. The scenes of a tragic picture I had seen haunted me day and night. But now I have developed a distaste for poetry and for all ‘sentimental’ literature. The ‘tragedies’ do not move me. ²⁹ Shaw is my hero. No grandeur now in ‘nature that is ours’. It move us not. “We have lost that intimate emotional relation with nature. Aesthetic admiration has taken the place of mystic participation with nature in which the classic ancients lived. We see in nature something merely pretty or something scientifically interesting. Our modern view of nature is anaemic. We have lost the heart-and-soul relation with nature.”³⁰ Poetry also is losing its appeal. The primitive poets and primitive audiences were childlike and naive. As the Homeric minstrel recited, the audience was weeping,–lost in rapture. The female devotees of Dionysus under the influence of music had hysterical seizures.³¹ When we read a poem, we may be deeply moved but we are seldom ‘carried away’. For the primitives a lapse into the unconscious was natural and easy. Whereas for us, the demands of the world are so constant upon our attention that it becomes hard to withdraw ourselves into fantasy when we wish, or for any length of time. We have lost the capacity for ‘psychic dissociation’. Our sceptical minds never feel at home in the world of make-believe, in which the primitives lived naturally. We never surrender to illusion readily or whole-heartedly.

Art is a child’s toy; as man grows in maturity, be begins to find it silly. The words of Shaw carry profound truth. As the race evolves, sentiment is superseded by thought, art by philosophic contemplation.

Modern English poetry is showing sure signs of disintegration. This is an age of prose; poetry is not popular with the average reader today. All early literature was made up exclusively of poetry, and this gradually grew into literature made up for the most part of prose. Prose best expresses the genius of the modern age. Poetry, today, draws its inspiration from civilisation, not from nature. Poets have developed a craze for novelty. The eternal poetic concepts of Life, Death, Soul, Immortality, are rejected as outworn; and low life, slang, aeroplanes, locomotives, gasometers are welcome as poetic themes. The heavy thud of bus traffic, the creaking of tramcars, the rattling noise of the railway trains,–all these find an echo in our poetry. Much of modern poetry is trivial, ³² of only an emphemeral value. The new modernist poetry is obscure, recondite, esoteric, and unintelligible. The Waste Land, the epic of the twentieth century is an intellectual puzzle. Poetry has traveled far away from Wordsworth’s ideal of simplicity. Our poets take account of intellectual perceptions rather than of romantic fancy or feeling. Emotional themes are deliberately eschewed. Modern poetry is an exaltation of the scientific spirit of the modern world. “The material of much recent contemporary poetry is barren and boring; a thin whimper has displaced both the song of joy and the strong cry of agony.”³³ The modern poet has turned a politician and a propagandist and lost sight of the eternities. Poetry now sets itself to solve the problems of civilisation, to preach political and socio-economic doctrines. But poetry cannot hope to thrive long on economics and dialectical materialism. It will wither in a day. This is a desert, a ‘waste land’. The hope of a revival is a delusion; the prospect of a return of the spirit which produced Virgil and Shakespeare–a mirage! The Great Song may never return again.

¹ Aldrich: “Primitive Mind and Modern Civilisation.”
² Vide “Rig Veda–Hymn to ‘Ushas’.”
³ Aldrich.
⁴ Jung “Psychology of the Unconscious.”
⁵ Rational thought and the poetic–two distinct faculties, two ways of the mind.
⁶ Mystic causation.
⁷ Jung.
⁸ Jung.
⁹ Jung.
¹⁰ In the child and the savage, perception is emotional.
¹¹ Prescott: “The Poetic Mind.”
¹² ‘A great work of art is like a dream’: Jung: “Psychology and Literature.”
¹³ Jung.
¹⁴ Prescott.
¹⁵ Aldrich.
¹⁶ Cf. Jung.
¹⁷ Jung “Modern Man in search of a Soul.”
¹⁸ Carlyle: “Charancteristics” –His doctrine of unconsciouness.
¹⁹ Poetry is not a gift in the sense that only a few are born poets. Keats insisted that all men are poets and have their moments of inspiration. This is not an exaggeration, in view of the above statement that even the ordinary savage was something of a poet. We think that poetry is a gift, perhaps because the common man is losing, or has already lost, the poetic faculty.
²⁰ Cf. Freud: “The Future of an Illusion.”
²¹ Freud.
²² Aldrich.
²³ Jung: “Psychology and Literature.”
²⁴ George Thomson: “Marxism and Poetry.”
²⁵ Caudwell: “Illusion and Reality.”
²⁶ Jung.
²⁷ The development of the individual is a shortened and quickened recapitulation of the development of the race. Cf. Aldrich.
²⁸ Cf. Emerson.
²⁹ I sometimes think that if the tragic heroes of Shakespeare had half of my sanity, there would be no tragedy. Yes, no tragedy and no poetry. Poetry implies a strain of madness. In fact, it is madness ‘in its exalted mood.’
³⁰ Aldrich.
³¹ Thomson: “Marxism and Poetry.”
³² e.g. Ralph Hodgson: Our poets sing of balls of
“Dancing dogs and bears,
And little hunted hares.”
³³ Word: “Twentieth Century Literature.”