H.P. Lovecraft. The Despised Pastoral
The Despised Pastoral
by H.P. Lovecraft
Among the many and complex tendencies observable in modern poetry, or what
answers for poetry in this age, is a decided but unjust scorn of the
honest old pastoral, immortalised by Theocritus and Virgil, and revived in
our own literature by Spencer.
Nor is this unfavorable attitude confined alone to the formal eclogue
whose classical elements are so well described and exemplified by Mr.
Pope. Whenever a versifier adorns his song with the pleasing and innocent
imagery of this type of composition, or borrows its mild and sweet
atmosphere, he is forthwith condemned as an irresponsible pedant and
fossil by every little-wit critic in Grub-street.
Modern bards, in their endeavour to display with seriousness and minute
verisimilitude the inward operations of the human mind and emotions, have
come to look down upon the simple description of ideal beauty, or the
straightforward presentation of pleasing images for no other purpose than
to delight the fancy. Such themes they deem trivial and artificial, and
altogether unworthy of an art whose design they take to be the analysis
and reproduction of Nature in all her moods and aspects.
But in this belief, the writer cannot but hold that our contemporaries are
misjudging the true province and functions of poesy. It was no starched
classicist, but the exceedingly unconventional Edgar Allen Poe, who
roundly denounced the melancholy metaphysicians and maintained that true
poetry has for its first object "pleasure, not truth", and "indefinite
pleasure instead of definite pleasure," intimating that its concern for
the dull or ugly aspects of life is slight ideed. That the American bard
and critic was fundamentally just in his deductions, seems well proved by
a comparative survey of those poems of all ages which have lived, and
those which have fallen into deserved obscurity.
The English pastoral, based upon the best models of antiquity, depicts
engaging scenes of Arcadian simplicity, which not only transport the
imagination through their intrinsic beauty, but recall to the scholarly
mind the choicest remembrances of classical Greece and Rome. Though the
combination of rural pursuits with polished sentiments and diction is
patently artificial, the beauty is not a whit less; nor do the
conventional names, phrases, and images detract in the least from the
quaint agreeableness of the whole. The magic of this sort of verse is to
any unprejudiced mind irresistible, and capable of evoking a more
deliciously placid and refreshing train of pictures in the imagination
than may be obtained from any more realistic species of composition. Every
untainted fancy begets ideal visions of which the pastoral forms a
legitimate and artistically necessary reflection.
It is not impossible that the intellectual upheaval attendant upon the
present conflict will bring about a general simplification and
rectification of taste, and an appreciation of the value of pure imaginary
beauty in a world so full of actual misery, which may combine to restore
the despised pastoral to its proper station.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
