1918] on Poetry and Modern Life 323 



If he takes an individual and makes of him a living character, the 

 more his story is occupied with him as a person, the less will the 

 significant sense of that swarming anonymous mass of human beings, 

 of which he is but a unit, pervade the poem. If he remain a type, 

 he will be colourless and lack Hfe. And in any case, so much of 

 him must be passive ; he is caught into great actions and events, of 

 whose issue and meaning he is ignorant. Here are difficulties possibly 

 not insurmountable, but certainly intimidating, since the poet will 

 seek above all things for vigour of design and salient relief in his 

 theme, and all this tends to a blurred outline. 



The material does not run naturally into the mould. Rather it 

 is the modern novel which is the natural, the inevitable form for 

 such a theme. 



But suppose that we avoid the common man, however much a 

 hero. Suppose we take individual characters whose actions are really 

 pregnant and far-reaching, in whom the asserted will makes for 

 happiness or calamity. If we take known persons, we cannot deal 

 with them freely ; they are too familiar on the surface, so that a 

 hundred irrelevant criticisms and curiosities are roused in the reader, 

 and yet in their inner selves, that which has most interest for the 

 poet, they are too little known. The portrayal will either be sup^^r- 

 ficial or fanciful. And if we take imaginary persons of our own 

 creating, w^e are again in the field of the modern novel. All the 

 detail of modern life, the detail we want to have forgotten, for the 

 sake of the spiritually significant, the inner reality, suggests itself 

 inevitably to the reader. Prose can handle this easily ; but it is a clog 

 on poetic movement. 



I think these reflections are enough to suggest why poets have 

 instinctively avoided in poems of a large scale actual contemporary 

 life. Let us go back for a moment to the example with which we 

 started. You remember how " Don Juan " opens — 



" I want a hero ; an uncommon want, 

 When every year and month sends forth a new one." 



How truly might we echo that in these days ! Then follows a list of 

 eminent men of action of Byron's time, including Wellington and 

 Nelson, all dismissed as 



" Exceedingly remarkable at times, 

 But not at all adapted to my rhymes." 



They are rejected for " our ancient friend, Don Juan." It is true 

 that Don Juan is re-created and made a contemporary of the poet's, 

 but through what remote scenes of adventure and romance he is led !. 

 What is really contemporary and relative to the age is Byron's mock- 

 ing comment, not only on his theme, but on every matter that comes 

 into his head. The poem grows less and less concrete as it proceeds ; 

 it is unfinished, but we hardly notice that, it has so little of objective 



