CONVENTION AND REVOLT IN POETRY

I

THE ROOTS OF CONVENTION

THE subject immediately before us is the roots of convention in poetry, not its beginnings. I have no intention of scrutinizing the dark backward and abysm of time for the dancing throng, or of disquieting the spirits of the ancient bards to bring them up. The origins of convention chronologically considered will not concern us here. There is, to be sure, keen zest in retracing the vestiges of primitive poetry, and in reconstructing, ex pede Herculem, primitive poetry itself. To build up Hercules from his foot, when everything above the ankle is your own creation, is an alluring exercise, and I confess its fascination, and yield to no one in my recognition of its fruitfulness. But I shall take another way. The phenomena of which I wish to speak spring from the very nature of poetry. In a word, it is because poetry is what it is that its conventions

are what they are. And my task at the moment is the scrutiny of poetry itself. In the face of that enterprise I feel with Keats in one of his letters: "The Cliff of Poesy towers above me, [and] I am one that 'gathers Samphire, dreadful trade.'

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We may deal summarily with the definition of convention. I am speaking to you now. And I am using sounds which have not the remotest logical connection with the things for which they stand. They mean what they mean solely because we accept them as meaning it. "Horse" has no more connection with the animal it names than ""πTOS," or "equus," or "cheval," or "Pferd." The varying sounds convey the idea of the creature to their respective users simply because, through immemorial consent, they are so understood. That is one element in convention acceptance.

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There is another. An artist sets to work to paint a landscape. But the landscape has three dimensions, the flat surface before him has but two. Out of the limitations of his medium he must construct a set of symbols that will give to a plane the appearance of depth. He does it, and we accept it, and see depth where it is not. A dramatist writes a play. The action covers days, weeks, perhaps months, or even years. The play

wright has at his disposal a brief three hours. Out of the limitations of his medium he must somehow bring it about that stage time shall produce the impression of real time. We know that hours and months do not synchronize, yet we accept them as coincident; we know that a surface has only two dimensions, yet we accept it as representing three. The major conventions of art, in other words, involve not only acceptance, but acceptance of illusion.

We are dealing, then, with the communication of ideas, perceptions, feelings, impressions. That involves a medium. The medium and the thing communicated do not correspond: stage time is not real time, a surface has not depth, words are not things. There are differences between the relations in each case, of course, but in all one fundamental fact appears: we accept as one thing something which is another and a different thing.

Convention, therefore, so far as art is concerned, represents concurrence in certain accepted methods of communication. And the fundamental conventions of every art grow out of the nature of its medium. Conventions beget conventions, to be sure, and their ramifications and permutations are endless. But that, for the moment, is another story. Our business now is