UC-NRLF lillii iili l|ll;|r' "" B M 0^3 EMQ r TiM,, yi i POETRY AND DREAMS BY F. C. PRESCOTT I Boston The Four Seas Com pan v 1919 / r r Copyright, 1912, by Richard G. Badger no?. V"i/w-iv,V --" The I'oiir Spas Pro«« nnsjiin. Ma»!i.. II. S. A. Poetry and Dreams POETRY is proverbially difficult to define and explain. The reason for this difficulty seems to lie partly in the subject itself and partly in our attitude toward it. The subject is indeed deep and complex. The production of poetry is still, as it has always been, a jrnys- terIous_grocess, even to the poets themselves; while even the most devoted and enlightened readers of poetry still find mystery in its action and eflfect. . Poetry, as SJjelley be- ^^ lievedj^ "acts..^iiL-a divine and unapprehended manner, i beyond _^and above consciousness.^'* Many poets — ^ToT ex- .^^^e^P^ ample Shelley and Wordsworth — in defining poetry resort ,. jOfr^" to poetical figures; others, like our poet of democracy, avoid definition scrupulously. "Let me not dare," says Walt Whitman, "to attempt a definition of poetry, nor answer the question what it is. 'Like religipn, Igve, nature, while these terms are indispensable, and we all give suffi- ciently accurate meaning to them, in my opinion no definition that has ever been made sufficiently encloses the name poetry."^ Perhaps, however, mystery in the subject en- genders superstilion, and leads .aiR. to regard poetry with supine reverence and wonder.,. We should indeed worship our great poets, as the men of old did their bards and proph- ets; but not abjectly, as savages do their medicine men. We speak of the "divine" Shakespeare, perhaps knowing too little of this poet's life to recognize how much he shared our common humanity. We call poetr^^^^^iyine, wliich is\\- another way of saying that it is still inexplicable to us.y All things are of God; and in the subject of poetry, as in others, our increasing knowledge should lead us to clearer understanding. We need make no apology, then, for attempting to approach this mystery. \/' There is some resemblajice and unexplained relation be- tween PjQPli y ijndjd xe^rns. The poet and the dreamer are son. 'how alike in their faculty of. _idsion. NThis relation is ' Deft se of Poetry, ed. Cook, p. 11. ^ A Bi :kward Glance o'er Travel'd Roads. 4903;)] Ji 4 ' "''''''•' Poetry 'dhd-Dreams indicated by the uses of language, which, spontaneously expressing the sense of mankind, often revea' psychological trulli not otherwise readily discovered. I'he poets have traditionally been dreamers, from the "dreamer Merlin" to the latest youth who "dreams" and rhymes. The poet writes of "dreams which wave before the half-shut eye."' I The word dream is thus constantly used by critics in describ- ^ ing the poet's work. ."The true poet," says Charles Lamb, "dreams being awake. "''/Poetry is defined by Sully Prud- homme as "le reve par lequel I'homme aspire a une vie superieure," ' The poets themselves in different times and different countries testify to the same effect, seeing not merely a metaphorical resemblance but an essential relation between dreams and poetry. Hans Sarhs, an inspired poet, thus speaks of the poet's inspiration:* "Mein Freund, das g'rad ist Dichter's Werk Dass er sein Traumen deut' und merk', Glaub mir, des Menschen wahrstes Wahn Wird ihm im Traume aufgetan: Air Dichtkunst und Poeterei Ist nichts als Wahrtraum-Deuterei." "The happy moment for the poet," says Bcttinclli, "may be called a dream — dreamed in the presence of the intellect, which stands by and gazes with open eyes at the performance. "■" "Genius," according to J ean Paul Richt er, "is, in more senses than one, a sleepwalker, and in its brigTiT dream can accomplish what one awake could never do. It mounts every height of reality in the dark; but bring it out of its world of dreams and it stumbles." ' Cjoethc , using the same word, speaks of writing Werther "uncon- sciously, like a sleepwalker," and of his songs he says: "It had happened to me so often that I would repeat a song to myself and then be unable to recollect it, that sometimes I would run to my desk and, without stirring from my place, write out the poem from beginning to end, in a sloping ' Thomson, Castle of Indolence, i. f ■ ' I£ssays of Klia, "The Sanity of Ti ur (. icimi^. 'For development of this adnnral>lcdefinitii>n «cc Revue des Deux ' londet, Oct. 1, 1897, "Qu'cJt que la Pocsie?" •Die Mciitcriinser. Quoted by W. StclccI, Dichtung uad Neuros . p. 2. ' W. Ilirtch, Genius and Degeneration, p. 32. F. C. Prescott hand, i or the same reason I always preferred to write with a pencil, on account of its marking so readily. On several occasions indeed the scratching and spluttering of my pen^awoke me from my somnambulistic poetizing."^ H^hhe]^ after recording in his Journal^ having actually dreamed an exceedingly beautiful but terrible dream, says: "My belief that dream and poetry are identical, is more and more confirmed." ' Lambj who was in spirit even more than in accomplishment a poet, believed that "the degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resident in the same soul waking." ^ Such expressions suggest that dream- ing and poetizing, if not identical as Hebbel believed, are more than superficially related. If we wish to understand poetr}', a clue like this, given us by' the poets themselves, is worth following. Unfortunately, however, dreams are as little known to us in their true nature as poetry itself. Though they are as old as history — probably as old as mankind — they are still obscure in their cause and significance and their rela- tion to the ordinary mental processes. The people, in all countries and from the earliest times, have clung to the belief that they are significant, particularly as foretelling the future. Their interpretation, however, has always been vague and uncertain. The theories of modern psychologists do not ordinarily go far or deep enough to be convincing or even interesting. Altogether the world of dreams has remained a mystery to us — a world in which we live a fantastic secondary mental life curiously unrelated to that of waking, from which we return puzzled by our fleeting memories. A recent book of Profe ssor Sigmund Fre yiL promises to ] Ibid., p. 33. Quoted by Stekel, p. 2. "Essays, "Witches and Other Night Fears." In Lamb's _original manuscript (in the Dyce-Forster Collection at South^Kensington) the final paragraph of the essax reads as follows: "When l^awoke I came to a determination to write prose all the. rest of my life; and with submission to some of our young writers, who are yet diffident of their powers, and balancing between verse and prose, they might not do unwisely to decide the preference by the texture of their natural dieiuns. H thgse are prosaic, they maydepend upon it they have not much to expect in a crea- ti\L£.way from.their artificial ones. Whaj'fTreams mu st not Sp ^^ser havpRad!" \ 6 Poetry and Dreams /give us a better understanding of this subject of dreams. According to Dr. Frcu d^our dreani s ar e an integral part of our mental life, witli definite origiTTand caTTse; they 'can be ^^Jjriirrly intfrprrncrl ^iQil, JirTMi£JTj__infn relation with our waking thougbis-^ajodL Xcclings; th ey areirT^cer tam respects sinirrar to other mental activities~vvith which we are fa- mlliarj and tFeyliave a cfefinite biological function which is important to ^r mental .ajid_phj^]cal_well^being. ^This view oT dreams forms part of an extensive and original psychological theory, developed by Dr. Freud, which is perhaps too new to be generally accepted — which, how- ever, undoubtedly suggests new views, not merely in the direction in which it was first mainly intended to be applied, but in many others — notably in literature. When I had occasion recently to become acquainted with this theory of dreams I was at once struck by the fact that many portions of it were equally applicable to poetry, so much so, indeed, that it occurred to me that Dr. Freud might have .first developed his theory from poetry and then transferred 't to dreams. I have since learned that this was not the case, that in fact he first approached the subject from a very different direction. The relation to poetry, however, is striking. I wish, then, in the first place to apply some portions of this theory to literary problems, in particular to transfer some of the conclusions in regard to dreams to the apparentl}' / related field of poetry, and to examine the evidence bearing j on these conclusions which is supplied by literature. For i the latter purpose I shall have to proceed mainly by quota- tion, even at the risk of trying the reader's patience. In fact, I do not wish to advance a new theory of poetry, or, for the most part, to express my own opinions; but rather to bring together and into relation some truths which have long since been expressed in poelr\ but ha\e iR\er been suc- cinctly stated in prose. Writing merely as a student ol literature 1 ^hall have to assume the soundness of Dr. Freud's theor)', though this may be still in debate among psychologists. Incidentally, Die Jltjuimdcutung, icaxtiJ edition, IW). Kor summaries of Dr. Freud's lhcor>^_oNrcami, «ee American Journal of Psychology, V ol. XXI, pi u-2iij,309. F. C. Prescott 7 however, I may be able to find some evidence bearing upon it in literature. New theories of this kind, if at all important, are seldom new in the sense that they have not been surmised and foreshadowed by poets and other imaginative writers. Chjs^_i£_a^ parL of the function of poets as prophets — to see I" utli_imaginatively before it is grasped intellectually;. It is one of the tests of new doctrines to ask if they thus find confirmation in literature. Let us retyjB to the parallel between poetry and dreams. Let us take into consideration also, for further comparison, besides dreams and___£oetry, two _other mental activities whi ch seem on similar evidence to be related — waking d ream.g'^;;i^dajr'3re'am Sy— a nd hysterical or neurotic halluci- nations aTrd~rihisions. That nocturnal dreams and dayT dreams^ave some relation is suggested by their common) designation, while day dreams frequently pass into halluci^ nations. The word dream is supposed to be etymologically^ connected with the German triigen^ to deceive, its fundameny tal idea being ijlujion. There is also apparent resemblance between the illusions of hysteria and the visions of poetic or prophetic rapture. The question is,\What may thes€^ several kinds of mental activity have in common? I I In a dream the scenes which we remember, with their grotesque figures and actions, and their curious emotional coloring, are called by Dr. Freud its "manifest content." ^ The manifest content is usually strange to us and cannot be intelligibly connected with our waking experience. Behind t^^ these appearances, however, is the "latent content" — the underlying thought of the dream — the impulses and ideas contributing to form it, of which underlying thought the remembered dream is a distorted, fictitious, or, one might almost say, dramatic representation. The dream is a group, or series of significant symbols. Its interpretation is like that of a dumb-show or a charade; j t^is a ma tter of finding the meaning which lurks behind, actuates, and explai ns thes ^ And this meaning when found grange appea rajices. And this meaning when found — the underlying thought v- is no longer unintelligible; it fits 8 Poetry and Dreams clearly into the dreamer's mental life, indeed it regularly concerns what to him is most personal and vital. These two tx^hings, the manifest and thejatent con tents, it is imp ortant that the reader should keep distinct and clearly in mind. The interpretati on of dreams, of their maQif£5l_co ntent, is a difficult matter, involving a knowledge of the so-called dream-work,'^ — that is, of the strange processes by which. ^ t"he urtderlyihg^ thought is elaborated into the manifest content by the mmd during sleep ^Ihe relation thus indicated between the apparent and the underlying thought of dreams will perhaps seem less novel to those accustomed to analyze and interpret works of literature and the other arts. Behind every work o f c reative imagin;)tinn — pnem, p .-^inting, r>r pifCf nf nrfb i- t XLCture — is the J jJtf"^' 'dea or mantivp impulse which In - spires and explains it (l ^he Prisoner of Chillon, for example, was the work of a man who pa';<;innaTply- dpcirad-pf^r^rmal liberty and s o devoted himself to the liberty of mankind . The Gothic cathedrals were inspired by the religious devotion and aspiration which dominated the middle ages. They were built, says Emerson, "when the builder and the priest and the people were overpowered by their faith. Love and fear laid every stone." Behind Marmion and Ivanhoe lay a love, contracted in childhood, for the medieval past, — which Scott spent his life in trying to realize and reconstruct. Scott's poems and novels were inventions — so to speak, dreams — having their key in Scott's ruling impuL<'c, whicii expressed itself thus through the working of his imagination, jln some similar way our ruling impulses are clothed in vfictional forms by a play of the imagination in sleep. ^UVl')' 'lr<-nni, :i< rr .r.lin^r LoDx. Fn . 'u d a nd ih ls J O OnOl4 the most important conclusions of the dr e am theory — has tlu ' kajTi e latent purp ( )rt — to rc - present th e^m a gmary ful ft 1 men t f some ungratilTed wis h/ The underlying thought may always be expressed^By a sentence beginning li'ould that — . In the dream proper this optative is dropped for the present indicative, or rather for a scene in which the wish is visibly represented as fulfilled. In dreams of children the wish is embodied openly; in those of adults it is commonly disguised Die Traumdcutung, III, VII (c). F. C. Prescott and distorted in the representation. Thus, in the world of dreams, we obtain those things which are denied in the world ^ of reality. We get money, place, children, friends, success in "Ty love, riddance of our enemies, — according to our desires. This fact is recognized by language in which dream is useji i for wish; to realize one's wildest dream i s t^ nhtain nnp'g | f "o n d e sjt__wishjk It is often recognized also in literature. "It ^all even be as when a hungry man dreameth," says Isaiah, ^and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite."* Our dreams do not always fulfil our wishes in the ob- vious way suggested by this passage. Sometimes these wishes are hidden even from ourselves. We do not recog nize the m as our true wishes; much less do we rec ognize thatThev- receive a fanciful fulfilment in our dreams. But at bottoml ' eyery^dream is inspired by an d gratifies some desire_o f_tl soul. Dr. Freud's theory of wish-fulfilment in dreams was probably not suggested to him by Nietzsche. It is, how- ever, in remarkable agreement with the theory advanced in the Morgenrothe.^ Nietzsche makes the supposition "that our dreams, to a certain extent, are able and intended to compensate for the accidental non-appearance of sus- tenance," or satisfaction for our cravings, "during the day." "Why was yesterday's dream full of tenderness and tears, Chap. XXIX, V. 8. So in Romeo and Juliet, each dreamer dreams according to his waking desire: "And in this state she [Queen Mab] gallops night by night Through lovers' brains and then they dream on love; O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight, O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees, O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. Sometimes she gallops o'er a courtier's nose, And then dreams he of smelling out a suit; t And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail Tickling a parson's nose as a' lies asleep. Then dreams he of another benefice." (Act I, Sc. 4.) 'See the translation. The Dawn of Day, 1903, p. 118. The whole section, "Experience and Fiction," is most interesting. X 10 Poetry and Dreams > while that of the preceding day was facetio us and wanton, ( and of a previous one adventurous and engaged in a con- tinued gloomy search? Why do I, on one, enjoy inde- scribable raptures of music; on another, soar and lly up with the fierce delight of an eagle to most distant summits? These /r/io«j, which give scope and utterance to our cravings for tenderness or merriment, or adventurousness, or to our longing after music or mountains, — and everybody will have striking instances at hand — are interpretations of our ner- vous irritations during sleep. . . . The fact that this text [of our nervous irritations] which, on the whole, remains very much the same for one night as for another, is so differently commented upon, that reason in its poetic efforts, on two successive dajs, imagines such diflPerent causes for the same nervous irritations, may be explained by the prompter of this reason being to-day another than yesterday, — another craving requiring to be gratified, exemplified, practised, re freshed, and uttered, — this very one, indeed, being at it^ flood-tide, while yesterday another had its turn? Real lif^l has not this freedom of utterance which dream-life has;/ it is less poetic, less licentious." Our cravings thus, in sleepj ];rompt a fictional and poetic gratification or utterance^ Nietzsche's expression is very suggestive. Sometimes our dreams come true. Our wishes are seldorrv-preposterqus — inconceliia My attainabl e. "In the attempt to realize our dreams," as Alr.^ LLi xcKxk KUis says., "lies a large part of our business in lite."' \ i lu-rc- ilu-re i;} a * willrhere i s a way. -^In waking re'aTity^we work toward and sometimes succeed in getting that for which we have longed, I and of which wc have dreamed. Thus the old belief that dreams are prophetic is justified. For the belief is indeed old and widespread, prevailing among all nations, civilized and uncivili'/.ed, and leaving traces in all literatures.* "I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh," says the Lord to Joel, "and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and \our \'oung men shall see visions." We may say of prophecy in dreams, as_Dj-. lal ip.son said of a pparitio ns: "All argument is against it, riic U'firld of Dreamt, "Aviation in Dreams." '.Sec K. B. 'I'ylor, Prinutivc Culture, "nJex. F. C. Prescott 11 but all belief is for it." We shall see presently that this belief is true in a profound sense.' It will be difficult, however, for various reasons, to give ^ examples which will make what has just been said — of wish fulfilment and prophecy in dreams — clear and convincing to the reader. Actual dreams might easily be recounted, and to these might be added the wishes which they have been found on analysis really to represent. This, however, would be unsatisfactory unless the analysis were also given, which is impracticable. The interpretation of dreams is difficult, involving knowledge of a complicated technique. It does not proceed by a uniform., stereotyped substitution of meanings for the dream symbols as in the old quackery of the "dream books." Though the general principles of interpretation are definitely ascertained, their appli- cation in practice varies constantly with the experiences, thoughts, and associations of each individual. Thus any convincing interpretation of examples would take the reader deep into the personal history of the dreamer and would involve endless narrative and explanation.^ It seems- better for our purpose to take an example from the analogous field of waking dreams or "day dreams." When we are alone and our attention is abstracted, when we sit with wide- open eyes before the fire or gaze through the window without seeing, when the pressure of the outside world is thus relaxed, then we "dream being awake." Our imagi- nations are freed and portray to the mind's eye an ideal world in which our hopes, otherwise vain, are realized. Then we build castles in Spain, or elsewhere, as we wish. If the conditions are favorable, if the imagination is active, and if the mind is moved by strong emotion ; these waking visions sometimes become extraordinarily vivid, amounting to hallucinations. The following example, then, will illustrate wish-fulfil- « Sec Freud, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, zweite Folge, p. S'), on ''resolution dreams"; also for dreams actually prophetic, A. A. Brill, New York Medical Journal, April 23, 1910. Dr. Brill first clearly explained the mantic character of dreams. 'Plenty of examples will be found in the Traumdeutung and in the summaries in the American Journal of Psychology, already referred to. 12 Poetry and Dreams ment and prophecy in dreams. Goethe tells how, as he was once riding to Gesenheim after visiting Fredcricka he saw his counterpart riding toward him. "I saw myself coming," he says, "along the same path on horseback toward me, dressed, as I had never been, in pike-gray and gold, I shook myself out of the dream, and the figure was gone. But it is singular that eight years later, not at all by choice, but only by chance, I found myself riding over the same path in the very direction my visionary self took, and clad in just these clothes, being again on my way to Fredericka. Whatever the explanation of these things may be, the wonderful phantom gave me at that moment of separation some alleviation." ' It is noteworthy that Goethe himself speaks of this apparition as a dream. The illusion was apparently stronger than in the ordinary day dream, perhaps because Goethe's imagination was more profound, perhaps because the in- citing emotion was more violent. The dream, however, is easy of interpretation. In this, as doubtless in a ll h allucinations, the wish is father to the thought. This visionary self, going in the opposite direction, obviously embodies a desire to return to Fredericka. And this desire is actually fulfilled, when eight years later Goethe follows the impulse which inspired his dream and returns to Fred- ericka, though apparently the impulse did not remain a conscious one with Goethe, for he returned by chance and not by choice. The dream thus becomes prophetic. Even the suit of pike-gray and gold is realized, though this also will seem not at all remarkable after a moment's considera- tion. Thus dreams al ways repres ent wishes, and thus dreams .somcl imes conie trut T In his pathetic essay," Dream Children," Lamb recounts a dream in which one of the deepest wishes of his heart secures imaginary gratification; but on awaking he finds himself "quietly seated in his bachelor armchair," and his wish is never in actuality realized. The same wish inspires similar visions in a recent talc, '"They," by Mr. Kipling. Ports h.Tvr nftrn, if mqi ;iiu.i\ s. been great dreamers.x jU;tl_mi.ly metaplu)ricall\ ', but actualh'^ and bul K bv ni^ht Quoted by Hirsch, Gcniui, p. 93. F. C. Prescott 13 and by day . Goethe had other strange visions. Lamb, for example in his "Chapter on Ears," recounts in his quaintly humorous way quite terrible dream experiences. Chatterton and Blake had remarkable dreams and visions, which were closely connected with their poetry. T)e Qninrpy found in df(;>am!^ n-intprial fnr hU "irnpaR.siopp'i pros'" ' ' rolefidg p in sleep rompo^pd the beautiful frag me nt which he entitled "Kiibla Khan." The "Ancient Mari ner" is either a dream or like one: a^J Lowell notes, "it is marvel ous in i_ts mastery o ver that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence which is the ad am a ntTne logic of drpam ^Dd."J— - ^oe has an interesting passage on the "psy.cbal"'fancies" arising ir Ithe soul " at those mere j^oHitsof time where the confin es o f_ the wakin^^jagofktplend with those of t h e world o ^ dreams";'^ and " Ligeia " and " Ulalume " give some idea o|f the strange world "out of space, out of time," through which his spirit passed. B nnyan , w ho is the typ e in litera ture of native inspn;a- tion without culture, and who thus j e rhaps illnptrates witj i s pecial clearness the working of poetic Imagination pure and u ntra mm eled. constant ly beheld visions u nder the strf^':! of his r e h'g'^^^^^^' pmr>ti'r>iai As 3. chlld, he tells us, he com- mitted terrible sins. These "did so offend the Lord, that even In my childhood he did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions."^ External objects and events passed by him unnoticed; while "he looked upon that which was passing through his own mind and heart as though It were something external."^ Watching his brazier's fire, journeying alone through coun- try roads, working mechanically In Bedford jail, he saw images and heard voices which were as clear and vivid to him as those of objective reality. Like Dunstan and Luther, he was tempted by the Devil in person, and yielded; he re- pented, and saw Christ himself looking down at him through the tiles of the house-roof, saying, "Ady grace is sufficient for thee." These appearances, says Taine, were "the products of an Involuntary and Impassioned Imagination, Literary and Political Addresses, "Coleridge." ^" Marginalia," Works, Virginia edition, Vol. XVI, p. 88. 'Grace Abounding, ed. Brown, pp. 9, xxiii. ^ k 14 Poetry and Dreams which by its hallucinations, its mastery, its fixed ideas, its mad ideas, prepares the way for the poet, and announces an inspired man."' fin Run yan w^as, as his principal biographer styles him, essentially " The Drearn er/'^ His books are little more than a record of his dreams. "As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream." "pj^)^ begins The Pilgrim's Progress, as the title says, "in the similitude of a dream." Shrllcy, the type of inspired poets, exhibited the same psychological character. " At no period of his life," say s j. A. Symonds, "was he wholly f ree from v isions which ha d the rea jjt v of facts . Sometimes they occurred in sleep, and were prolonged with gainful vividness into his waking mo- ments. Sometimes they seemed to grow out of his intense meditation, or to present themselves before his eyes as the projection of a powerful inner impression. All his sensa- tions were abnormally acute, and his ever-active imagination i confused the border larjds of the actual and the visionary." ^ The account, given bylHogg, of his "slumbers resembling a profound lethargy," tHls us that "he lay occasionally upon the sofa, but more commonly stretched out before a large fire, like a cat; and his little round head was exposed to such a fierce heat, that I usea to wonder how he was able to bear it. . . . His torpor was generally profound, but he would sometimes discourse incoherently for a long time in his sleep." Then "he woulq suddenly start up, and, rubbing his eyes with great violence, and passing his fingers swidly through his long hair, wou\Id enter at once into a velum out argument, or begin to recite verses, cither of his own com- position or from the work l^itcralurc, Hcxik II, Chap. 5, Sec. 6. 'Sec, for example, the vision described in Grace Abounding, paragraph 53, with Hunyan's interpretation. ^' Shcllry. p. 91. ^^Uicllcy. F. C. Prescott 15 roof at Leghorn.* "When ny brain gets heated with a thought," he said, "it soon boils." ^ In such a mood he wrote " The Triumph of Life." " The intense stirring of hi s imagination implied b}' tl-ii'; <;iiprpmp pnptir pffnrt^ thp <;r)li- t ude of the \'illa Alagni, and the elempn ta] fprvnr nf Ttajj^p h eat to \vhic h he recklessly exposed himself, contribnted to m ^ke Shelley more tha n usually nerv^-tns. His somnam- bulism returned, and he saw visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed and beckoned to him. On another he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision."^ A study of Shelley's life shows that there is the closest connection between this power of vision and his poetical faculty. Perhaps Shelley's case was one of those which led Lamb to believe that the soul's creativeness in sleep furnishes a measure of the poetical faculty. Slevenson has a "Chapter on Dreams," describing his own experience, which is so instructive that if space per- mitted it should be quoted here entire.* " Ij^e was from a c hild," he te lls us, " an ardent and uncomforta ble dreamer"; as a child he had terrible drea m-haunted nTghts . While a s t^udent m llidmburghJie_began_i^to dr£amJjl-Sec[uence^3ri^ thus to lead a^ou ble Tife — one of the day, one of the night ' ' — which soon sent him "trembling for his reason" to the doctor. He "had long been in the custom of setting himself to sleep with tales, and so had his father before him." It is not strange, then, that he "began to read in his dreams — tales, for the most part, and for the most part after the manner of G. P. R. James, but so incredibly more vivid and moving than any printed books, that he has ever since been malcontent with literature." "But presently," he continues, "my dreamer began to turn his former amuse- ment of story telling to (what is called) account; by which I mean that he began to write and sell his tales. Here was he, and here were the little people who did that part E. Dowden, Life of Shelley, p. 429. 'Symonds, Shelley, p. 166j see quotation, p. 26, below. 'Ibid., p. 177. * Works, Thistle Edition, Vol. XV, p. 250. #► 16 Poetry ard Dreams of his business, in quite new flonditions. The stories must now be trimmed and pared and set upon all fours, they must run from a beginning to an end and fit (after a manner) with the laws of life; the pleasure in a word had become a business; and that not only for the dreamer but for the little people of his theatre. These understood the change as well as he. When he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, he no longer sought amusement, but printable and profitable tales; and after he had dozed off in his box-seat, his little people con- tinued their evolutions with the same mercantile designs." Tlius the scenes of some of Stevenson's tales, for instance. of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." were first enacted in this dream theatre; a nd these tales were, as he represents them, a col- laboration bet ween himself and what he calls his 'Mittl>^ \ Pgopje^ — - that is, between his r nn<;riniig wal-in g intellerr a nd his dream faculty . These examples will perhaps serve to make more con- vincing the transition which we are now to make from dreams to poe txy prop^ . The function of poetry also seems to be l o represent the imaginary fulfilment of our inVgratified wislxe s or desire.s . The poet B,a£aD says, " submits the shows of things to the des ires of the r pi"d ." The poe^ is es s entially ^ ")an fill <^ d wit h dp«;irp^ iins - Qti g fiprlj . .anrl it jc; in a "stala -oi" dissatisfaction that poetry arises. ' The lover, separated from his mistress, who falls to scribbling verses, is typical of all poets. The dissatisfaction inspiring poetry, however, may be of any kind. Burns parted from his Clarinda, Dante worshiping Beatrice from a distance, Byron suffering from oppression and unable to fight actively against it, Coleridge dissatisfied with life in England as he finds it, and dreaming of a Utopia on the banks of the Susquehanna, Wordsworth looking back to the time when the earth "did seem Apparelled in celestial light," are all in the mood for producing poetry. Tju ^oct does not l ive in the present; he li opes an d aspires, " Jt is no mciio amii:^: ^tion of t he^beaiij^' beJorcJlLi,'* savs ]^\ which in- spires the poet, "f^H ,-1 wild ifT.i ri to reach the b c.nity Compare the theory of Ribot, I.'Imagination Crcatrice, p. 36; "C'cst dans les bcsoins qu'il faut chcrchcr la cause premiere Je toutes les inventions." F. C. Prescott 17 above. It is the desire of the moth for the star 5Jl The use of poetry is to aflFord an e sca pe from re nh'tv; to trBftfi- fprm the real world, by an effort of the poetic ima ginarinnj into an ideal world in a ccordance with o iir_desir'"s, nnr hnpps^ ^ur aspiratio n^ The use of poetry, Bacon says again, "hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it; the world being in proportion inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is agreeable to the spirit of man a more ample greatness, a more compact goodness, and a more absolute variety, than can be found in the nature of things. "^ Byron expresses nearly the same thought in verse: " The beings of the mind are not of clay; Essentially immortal, they create And multiply in us a brighter ray And more beloved existence: that which Fate Prohibits to dull life, in this our state Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, First exiles, then replaces what we hate; Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, And with a fresher growth replenishing the void."^ It is perhaps dangerous to generalize broadly and say that the use of all poetry is that which R ^cpn descri bes, t hat poetry uniformly rep r^f^<"ntR the gratifiratinn of nnsar- 'sfird Hpg^''"^g| Aluch goes under the name of poetry, satir- ical, humorous, and didactic, to which this description is not directly applicable. Poetry is broadly of two kin ds — to employ a distinction of John Keble's which will be noticed later — primary , which is original and in apir^-^; ^"d qpt- oadajy, w hich is serond-hand^ rnpying the forms, M_Ld.- spiration. There is Homer, and there are poets like those whom Plato describes as depending on Homer, as the suc- cessive iron rings on the magnet. Our principle applie s only to thp pnptry pf insp iratifin . Perhj4is_aJi..imag^ina^tiye_ . lyricof pur,; Joy would :qnstitute an exception to the prin- ciple. It is doubtful, however, if unmixed'Toy'Ts 'a poetical mood; if the note of sadness is not, as-^-SheUeyi- and_ JPpe • "The Poetic Principle." 'The Advancement of Learring, Book II. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, IV, 5. ''*""» "'"^ 18 Poetry and Dreams thought, inseparable from true poetry. Perhaps even in joy the heart remains unsatisfied; "it may still feel," as Poe says, "a petulant impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys of which ... we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses."' Poetry, according to Words- worth and Coleridge, always implies passion; and passion is properly suflfering, dissatisfaction, the effect of desire. "Most wretched men," says Shc Hey, in "Julian and Maddalo," "Are cradled into p^iry by wrong: And learn in suiTer^ what they teach in song." Poetry expresses passion ^fid poetry expresses unsatis- fiei-dedre ; I believe it is not psychologically incorrect to say that these two statements are fundamentally equivalent. In judging the general principle above mentioned — that the end of poetry, as of dreams, is to satisfy desire — the reader should keep in mind two further considerations. First, tha t_thc gratification of poetry may extend no further than that derived from the jdealize d exp r ession, which is in eveiy case subst ituted for the imperfect an d inhibited utter ance ot ordmary^ life . ^^Qudly, thatm^po etry the poet 's__d£- s ^res are not represented openly ami literally; they are dis- guisedy conveyed through a medium of fic tion,^ b odied-forlh i n strange for ms as a _r esurt of t|ic alchemic action, the ' ^ream-work,'' ol the"po e t's brain. Tl^ ja st p oint wilM^e no^e jull)^ considered^latQj-. In? 'poct'^s "called creative, and his acti vity th a t of the creative liTi^girfattelT. ' ~^0(5d"'vnt1i^ to his divme imagThatuDn,"''^says Puttenham, expressing the view of the older English critics, "made all the world of naught. . . . Eve n so the very p oet makes and combinf^s out nf his own h^:ain both the verse an d mnttcr of his potjn,"^ So Byron says of poetry: '* 'Tis to create, and in creatii.t* live A being more intense, that uc.cndow With form tmr fancy, gaining as we givcj The life wf image, even as I do now."^ j The Poclic Principle." 'Arte of Kn^libh Pocsic, cd. Arhcr, p. V). •Childc Harold'* PilKriniagc, 111,6. F. C. Prcscott 19 And Shelley of the poet: "But from these create he can f > ■ Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality.'" The poet is call ed a creator because, as we have seen, he creates in an ideal world, according to our de sires, what Is_ Tarlcin^__in _the Hivin("l3'created world of rea lityT His work IS- thus akin to the divine^ — ''a repetition," as Coleridge calls it, "in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite / aw."^ He is essentially what the name signifies, 7roiT]T^<;^ a maker or creator. Poetry, as all the older and better critics agree, is not essentially expression in metrical language, — "No jingling serenader's art Nor tinkling of piano strings."^ Bacon, following Aristotle, calls poetry "feigned history," and includes under it all kinds of fiction. "The poet is a maker, as his name signifies," says Dryden, "and he who cannot make, that is, invent, has his name for nothing." Fiction, moreover, is essentially eq uivalent to poetry, as its etymology would suggest — ^ coming from the Latin fingere , r elate d to facere, it sig nifies a mak in g or creatiorT .^ The German Dichtung c omprises both poetry and fjc tjpn; indeed, by older ^English critics plays and novels are frequently called poems, even when written in prose. The essential activity of the writer of plays and novels is the same as that of the poet; he also creates in an ideal world, subjecting the shows of things to the desires of the mind. The word poetry, therefore, will be used here throughout, as the equivalent of Dichtung, to include every work of creative imagination in literature, whether in prose or verse. The p^elS -have trad itlonaUy. be£J L considered prophet s. Prometheus Unbound, Act I, Sc. 1. ♦ ^Biographia Literaria, Chap. XIII. ^Emerson, Merlin. 'To this creation the imitation of Aristotle is essentially equivalent. It is not an imitation of nature in the ordinary sense, but a sublimation of nature; or, more exactly, a mimic creation, arising partly from the natural propensity of men to copy what they see in nature, and partly from the poetic or fictioning propensity mentioned above. See S. Butcher, Aristotle's TTieory of Poetry and Fine Art, Cha p. IV, particularly pp. 150, 153. f > 20 Poetry and Dreams Apollo was the god of poetry and of the oracles. "The oracles of Delphos and Sibylla's prophecies were wholly delivered in verses"; as those of Mother Shipton and of the present day fortune-teller are in jingling rhymes. The same is true "of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies." To the bard, the seer, and the prophet have been attributed the same character and inspiration. This view is still confidently held. After noting that in earlier epochs poets we re cajl ed legislatorTand prop heis, Shelley says: ''A poet essentially comprises and unites both of these characters. For he not only beholds the present intensely as it is and discovers the laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and fruit of latest time." Emerson believes that poets are still inspired to prophecy, — as in "Merlin": "There are open hours When the God's will sallies free And the dull idiot might see The flowing fortunes of af thousand years." What js the _expl a nation of this union of_ poetry and_ prophecy.'' Perhaps in part it lies merely in the fact that the poet is a man o f wid e learning and observation, of free and compre h ensive thou ght, who, employ^ing an imagination of the merej}^ prac tical order, akin to that ot the m erchant forec asti ng thf> rnrqing ye ar in business, "beholds the future in th c _ present" gnd fo rrtrll'^ it Thus Shelley foresaw future events in Irish politics.' ;\ deeper explanation is I suggested, however, by the apparition of Goethe, men- tioned above. The poet in his poetry expresses iiis desires, primarily his own desires, but also, through his well-known universal and representative character, the desires of others r-of his class or country, of mankind. Great po ets are fereat for that reason, because their writings give" "some S hadow oT satisfa ctio n to the minds ot all nic;n '.' VVh at tlu- Symonds, Shelley, pp. 62, 63. ShcIIcy li.id siranjjc premonitions of his dcathbydrowninK;8ee p. 154. Blake. takenby his father to Ryland's studio, said, after leavinf?, "Father, I do not like the man's face; it looet spon- taneously, by a v^tilntary action of the intellect; it emerges Cf. Die Traumdeutung, p. 304. Essays, "Sir Walter Scx)tt." 24 Poetry and Dreams involuntarily and unconsciously as the result of a hidden activity, which, therefore, we cannot readily investigate, and which we call, without attaching definite meaning to the words, that of the "poetic imagination," Poetry, as Shelley \ declares, is "created by that imperial faculty whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man."' The attitude of the poet is never that of the man of science, I who can trace his work definitely step by step from in- ception to completion; it is rather that of Voltaire, who, on seeing one of his tragedies performed, exclaimed, "Was it really I who wrote that?" The testimony of poets and critics to this eff^ect is universal and familiar to every student of literature. It seems advisable, however, to quote from some of them. "Many are the noble words in which poets speak con- cerning the actions of men," Plato makes Socrates say, "but .... they do not speak of them by any rules of art; they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them. . . . God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses divines and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us."^ According to Spenser, poetry is "no art, but a divine gift and heavenly instinct, not to be gotten by labor and learning, but adorned with both, and poured into the witte by a certain Enthousiasmos or celestiall inspiration."^ The imagination, on the authority of Shakespeare, "bodies forth the forms of things unknown."* The expressions of more recent poets and critics are to the same effect. This "instinct of the imagination," says Hazlitt, "works unconsciously like nature, and receives its impressions from a kind of inspiration.^ Scott, the Defense of Poetry, ed. Cook, p. 7. 'Ion, Jowctl's Translation, third edition. Vol. I, p. 502. *Quoicd with pari of the preceding, by VVoodberry, The Inspiration of Poctrv, p. 2. 'Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Sc. 1. 'English Comic Writers, cd. W. C. Mazlitt, p. 147. V. F. C. Prescott 25 sanest of poets, says: "In sober reality, writing good verses seems to depend upon something separate from the voli- tion of the author."' George Eliot, living in the clear light of modern science, declared "that in all she considered her best writing there was a 'not herself which took pos- session of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting."^ iGoethe says: "There is a sense in which it is true that poets, and indeed all true artists must be born and not made. Namely, there must be an inward productive power to bring the images that linger in the or- gans, in the memory, in the imagination, freely without purpose or will to life," This is the opinion of those we should call poets of art as well as of poets of inspiration. "It is not well in works of creation," Schiller writes, "that reason should too closely challenge the ideas which come thronging to the doors. ... In a creative brain reason has withdrawn her watch at the doors, and ideas crowd in pell- mell." Voltaire wrote to Diderot: "It must be confessed that in the arts of genius instinct is everything. Corneille composed the scene between Horatius and Curiatius just as the bird builds its nest."* Voltaire's expressive figure agrees curiously with that in Emerson's "Problem," which with "Spiritual Laws" throws much light on this subject: "Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest Of leaves, and feathers from her breast.'' Or how the fish outbuilt her shell. Painting with morn her annual cell? "The hand that rounded Peter's dome And groined the aisles of Christian Rome Wrought in a sad sincerity: Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew; — The conscious stone to beauty grew. Lockhart, Life of Scott, Chap. XXXVIII, Letter to Lady L. Stuart. 'Cross, Life of George Eliot. 'Quoted by Hirsch, Genius, pp. 31-33. 'April 20, 1773. 26 Poetry and Dreams "These temples grew as grows the grass; Art might obey, but not surpass. The passive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned." We may stop a moment more over two writers whom we have already considered in some detail — Bunyan and Shelley. Taine writes of Bunyan's imagination: "Powerful as that of an artist, but more vehement, this imagination worked in the man without his co-operation, and besieged him with visions which he had neither willed nor foreseen. From that moment there was in him, as it were, a second self, ruling the first, grand and terrible, whose apparitions were sudden, its motions unknown, which redoubled or crushed his faculties, prostrated or transported him, bathed him in the sweat of agony, ravished him with trances of joy, and which by its force, strangeness, independence, Impressed upon him the presence and the action of a foreign and „superior master."^ Shelley's inspiration must have been of a similar order. Trelawny tells of finding Shelley alone one day in a wood near Pisa, with the manuscript of one of his lyrics: "It was a frightful scrawl, words smeared out with his fingers, and one upon another, over and over In tiers, and all run to- gether In the most admired disorder. . . . On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When my brain gets heated with a thought, It soon boils, and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning when cooled ^down, out of the rude sketch, as you justly call It, I shall attempt a drawing.' "^ We have seen that with Shelley bodily heat was conducive to dreams and poetry. So here he describes the heat of inspiration; a^/lie does also In the following from the Defense of Poetry^ [ "Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be e.xerted according to the determi- nation of the will. A man cannot say, ' 1 will compose poetry.' The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind In creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible intiuence, like an Inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower 'Knglish Literature, Book II, Chap. V, Sec. 6. 'Symonds, Shelley, p. 166. F. C. Prescott 11 which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious fortunes of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.'' ;"' - Poetical creation, tlieiui*-g«fie.raljy described as an in- stinctive and unconscious process. Poetry is not a con- scious product of the intellect, but the manifestation or symptom of an inner uncontrolled activity./ What does this mearj.'' /We have seen that poetry is til^ expression of desires. Is it not natural to suppose that the desires of the poet, as of the dreamer, are impeded and consequently re- pressed, — forced back into unconsciousness. These desires are prevented from serving as motives for conscious action looking toward gratification; thus failing of expression they become unconscious but still remain operative in another m^anner — ^H^,^ is, in starting an activity affording a fictional gratification] [ If this is the case then poetry, like dreams, has its source in repressed and unconscious desires.] i Let us see what further support is to be found in literature ^or this view. In one of his critical essays, which has been too much overlooked, John Kebje "proposes by way of conjecture" the following definition: "Poetry is the indirect expression in words, most appropriately in metrical words, of some overpoweftng emotion, ruling taste,"~or feeling, the direct indulgence whereof is somehow repressed."^ Keble's exposi- tion of this definition is well worth tlTe reader's attention. As a whole it cannot be even summarized here. Some parts of it, dealing with the nature of the poet's indirect ex- pression, with the function of metre, and with the kinds of poetry, will be noticed later. For the present we are con- cerned with Keble's theory of repression in poetry — which is in substance that poetry is the expre-ssioa of repressed emotion, or, substituting terms which he uses on another page, of repressed "desire or regret."^ Keble says nothing of the unconscious origin or production of poetry; other- wise his theory is obviously in general agreement with that The British Critic, Vol. XXIV, p. 426, — a review of Lockhart's Life of Scott, reprinted in Occasional Papers and Reviews, 1877. See also Keble's De Poeticae Vi Medica; Praeiectiones Academicae Oxonii Habitae, 1844. -Keble's theory is founded on Aristotle's; cf. ibid., pp. 428, 435. He per- haps does some violence to Arist otle's imitation in tr anslating it expression; but his theory TO-tTHttbaan tiafagreemen t with Aristotle's. ^ I 28 Poetry and Dreams suggested in the preceding pages. There is no element of poetry in the direct indulgence, or expression, of feeling. It~Ts"ori1y when this indulgence,- or expression, is impeded that poetry arises. Thus a speech which contrives by as- sociation or allusion to expose a hidden feeling, or a face which by a sudden and fleeting play of feature conveys an otherwise incommunicable motion of the heart,, we feel to-be "expressive," or "poetical." It gives pleasure by over- coming difficulty and obviating repression, f We call a land- scape poetical "when we feel that it answfcrs, or tends to express, and by expression to soothe or develop, as the case may be, some state more or less complicat(?d of human thought and feeling," for which we can find no words.; Peetry expresses what by other means is inexpressible. The impediment toexpression may~be of any nature. Per- haps the "very excess and violence" of the emotions "make the utterance of them almost impossible"; perhaps the emotions "in their unrestrained expression would appear too keen and oytrageous to kindle fellow feeling"; perhaps there is in the writer's mind an "instinctive delicacy" which shrinks from communication. In any case direct expression being impossible a veiled or poetical one is the recourse. For some expression is necessary; the emotions must have vent. What Keble calls "the - instinctive wish to communicate" must be satisfied.^ "All men," Emerson says, "live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression."^ Thus to "open one's mind" is healthful and comforting. The lover is relieved if he can confess his passion. -The man in anger must "speak his mind" or "have it out." And the same in grief; "he often finds present helpe who docs his griefc impart."' On the other hand, the repression of emotion is painful and dangerous. "That way madness lies." "Give sorrow words: the grief that docs not speak, Whispers the o'crfraught heart and bids it break."* Sec llirsch, Genius, pp. 43-4.S. 'Essays, "Tlic Poet." 'Spenser, Faerie Queene, II, i, 46. •Macbeth, Act IV, Sc. 3. \ 1 F. C. Prescott : 29 I This helps to explain the cause and use of poetry. We Ihave seen that the function of dreams is to prevent the disturbance of sleep; that of poetry is entirely analogous. /'Here, no doubt," says Keble, "is one final cause of poetry: I'to innumerable persons it acts as a safety valve, tending to preserve them from mental disease." Or, as Newman expresses it: ''Poetry is a method of relieving the over- burdened mind; it is a channel through which emotion finds expression, and that a safe, regulated expression." It ac- complishes "thus a cleansing,''^ as Aristotle would word it, "of the sick soul."^ The testimony of poets supports this view. Goethe speaks of his habit "of converting whatever rejoiced,, or worried or otherwise concerned me into a poem and so have done with it, and thus at once to correct my conception of outward things and to set my mind at rest." "Sing I must," he makes Tasso say, "else life's not life." Schiller, speaking of some of his lyrics, says: "They are>,too true for the. individual to be called poetry proper; for in them the individual appeases his need and alleviates his burden."^ "I kittle up my rustic reed," says Burns in his Epistle to W. Simson, "it gies me ease"; and to the same effect in a letter to Moore: "My passions raged like to many devils till they got vent in rhyme; and then conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet. "^ Wordsworth must have found relief in poetical expression: "To me alone there came a thought of grief; A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong.'"* Essays Critical and Historical, "John Keble." ^Quoted by Hirsch, Genius, pp. 45, 50. 'August 2, 1787. Cf. also "The Vision": "I taught thee how to pour in song, To soothe thy pain." ' Intimations of Immortality." Cf. Tennyson, "In Memoriam," v, 2: "But for the unquiet heart and brain, A use in measured language lies; The sad mechanic exercise. Like dull narcotics numbing pain." But this is a relief of another sort, — mechanic rather than truly poetic. J ^'•H^r 30 Poetry and Dreams Mr. Kipling seems to have understood this matter. In- troducing the tale of the ''Phantom Rickshaw" and speaking of its supposed nar-rator, he says: "When he recovered 1 suggested that he should write out the whole affair from be- ginning to end, knowing that ink might assist him to ea?e his mind. When little boys have learned a new bad word they are never happy until they have chalked it upon a door. And this also is literature."^ The little boy clearing his mind by expression is, as Mr. Kipling suggests, typical of l]:^- later poet. This use of poetry to the poet explains, in part at least, its value to the reader. ' The poet provides expression not merely for himsQ^f, bu^,' by virtue of his representative character, for his readers as well. One who reads, not as a student or a connoisseur for an ulterior purpose, but for the true pleasure and satisfaction which the reading affords, finds in poetry the expression not of another's feeling but of his own. He identifies himself with the poet and himself lives through the poem; the poet is only his spokesman, providing him with the needed outlet for his pent emotion; for him, too, the poem expresses what would otherwise re- main inexpressible. Thus countless readers find relief and comfort in poetry. And this, explains, in part at least, the pleasure which poetry affords.. It is a pleasure of satisfied desire, akin to the pleasure of actual satisfaction, — the satisfaction in this case being an imaginary or fictional one, a substitute for the actual, but affording a similar pleasure. The use of poetry, Bacon says, is "to give some shadozv of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it." The reader will remember that we are throughout em- ploying the term poetry broadly to include all creative liter- ature: what has just been said therefore applies to fiction generally, to the novel and the drama. Men arc fatigued with the business of life, they are preyed upon by unpleasant feelings, they suffer from a tension which requires relaxa- tion. They read a novel or go to the theatre, and find sup- plied in fiction what is wanting to them in reality. They Kipling omits thf last two smtcrurK in smnc t-iiitioiis of the Pli.Ttii>iiii Riik- ihaw." F. C. Prescott 31 feel what Keble calls the vis medica poeticce; after living in this world of fiction thev "With peace and consolation are dismissed .. And calm of mind, all passion spent. "^ (( This view of poetry as a safe and regulated expression for emotion will perhaps supply some commentary to Aris- totle's definition of tragedy. The function of tragedy, according to this definition, is "tp. effect through pity and _iear the katharsis or purgation' of these emotions.". This definition is not necessarily inconsistent with our description of poetry as satisfying desire. Shelley observes: "Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself, are often the chosen expres- sions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sym- pathy in tragic fiction depends upon this principle: tragedy •delights by affording a shadow of that pleasure which ex- ists in pain."^ The Aristotelian katharsis, at any rate, is related to the vis medica wYixch. we have explained. It is not a moral but primarily a psychic cleansing, or curative pro- cess, aimed at a pathological condition of the mind. .Katharsis is a medical term; in "the language of the school of Hip- pocrates it strictly denotes the removal of a painful or dis- turbing element from the organism, by the elimination of alien matter."^ "Applying this to tragedy," says Pro- fessor Butcher, "we observe that the feelings of pity and fear in real life contain a morbid or disturbing element.* In the process of tragic excitation they find relief, and the morbid element is thrown off. The curative or tran- quilizing influence that tragedy exercises follows as an im- mediate accompaniment of the transformation of feeling." Thus to the Greeks a dramatic representation was not merely a means of amusement, but a great public and sacred rite of purification.^ Milton, Samson Agonistes, last two lines. -Defense of Poetry, ed. Cook, p. 35. '^Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, p. 253. 'Students of Dr. Freud's theory will understand why fear should contain a morbid or disturbing element, — fear being the conversion of repressed desire. ^This, however, is an unguarded statement. For it is also one purpose of our amusements to cleanse the sick mind. Play is the idealizing fiction of the child as poetry is of man. It is appropriate, therefore, that we should call our dramatic performances plays. It is interesting to find that those who practise the method originated by Dr. 32 Poetry and Dreams The conclusion, then, to which this evidence leads is that poetry is the expression of repressed and unconscious desires; and that the function of poetry, biologically con- sidered, like that of dreams, is to secure to us mental repose and hence health and well-being. Poetry "cleanses the sick soul." Might this be one reason why Apollo had for his province not only poetry but healing, the two things being thus intimately related as means to end.'' Freud, for dealing with psychoneuroses, speak of it as the cathartic method. The essential feature of this method is that it provides expression for repressed emo- tions, these constituting "a painful and disturbing element in the organism"; it eflFects "the elimination of alien matter." This mere expression has been found curative in psychoneuroses. The Greeks were apparently familiar with a cathartic treatment for morbid emotional states, persons afflicted with madness or "enthu- siasm" being treated by music, which accomplished an emotional cleansing analo- gous to that accomplished by tragedy. Persons so treated, says Aristotle, "fall back into their normal state, as if they had undergone a medical or purgative treatment." Perhaps this is one of the matters which the Greeks understood better than we. See Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, Chap. IX; cf. Plato. Charmides, Jowett's translation, third edition, Vol. I, p. 13. > I III ^et us now again return to the subject of dreams. Dreams, as has been said, have their origin in the depths of the mind, in -unconscious mental processes, — that is, in proc- esses which do not come to our knowledge except indirectly, or under unusual or abnormal conditions, — the conditions supplied, for example, in dreams, in day dreams and halluci- nations, and in certain neurotic activities. Under ordinary conditions there is a force operating to prevent these proc- esses from rising to the surface of consciousness. If the reader has ever tried to recall any matter — for example, ^a proper name — which has fallen out of his recollection, and which he can almost but not quite recollect; if he has felt himself, so to speak, struggling to recover this matter and baffled in his efforts, he can form some idea of the re- pressive force in question.^ This force is called in the dream theory the "psychic censor"; it "stands at the gateway of consciousness." In general, it prevents the deeper processes from becoming conscious. Under certain conditions, how- ever, when this force is relaxed, as in sleep, it allows the re- pressed material to pass, or permits an evasion. That is, it permits such material to pass, but only in a disguised and distorted form, under which it escapes recognition. The so-called psychic censor, as its name implies, resembles a public censorial officer, say of the political press, who will not allow unpleasant truth to pass for publication, but may be evaded by a veiled or disguised representation. In dreams the latent content is under repression; it passes the ' Freud explains this amnesia as caused by a connection between such a name and material which is under repression. See Psychopathologie des Alltagslebens, p. 3. 33 ci- \J 34 Poetry and Dreams censor only in a disguised and distorted form, in which it becomes unrecognizable • — that is, in the form of the manifest content. The operations by which, under the direction of the cen- sor, the underlying thoughts are transformed into the appar- ent dream are called the "dream work" {Traumarbeit)} They cannot be fully explained here, this being the most complex and difficult part of the dream theory. Through these operations, however — described technically as "con- densation," "displacement," "secondary elaboration," etc. — the underlying thought is in appearance completely trans- formed; it is bodied forth in a strange guise which bears little or no resemblance to the original. This explains why dreams appear absurd and imcomprehensible; only when these disguises have been stripped off, only when the work of the censor has been retraced and undone, do they disclose their underlying thought. An interpretation of dreams, then, requires a knowledge of the dream work. In this transformation, however, one element remains unchanged. A dreajE.Is. always emotional, and the emotion which has properly belonged to the origmatndream-thoughts still clings to the final dream, where sometimes it seems strangely out of place. That is, intense feeling is sometimes attached to apparently most trivial things, the explanation for this being that feeling is transferred to these things from the more important ones in the original for which they stand. Whatever strange forms the dream may take this emotion is real and vital; "im Traume ist der Affect das einzig Wahre." Some features of this transformation, effected by the dream work, require for our purposes further explanation. The dream is fictional in two senses. In the first place it represents an ungratified desire as gratified, substituting for the utinam of the latent content a phantasm of gratifica- tion. In the second place it represents the abstract by a symbolical concrete. The underlying material, tlu- ele- ments from which the dream is formed, with the desires as motive power, may be anything which finds place in the human mind — persons and places, thoughts and opinions, 'Die Traumdculung, VI. ,J^ F. C. Prescott 35 facts observed or Inferences from facts, concretions or ab- stractions. In the dream these elements are reduced or transposed into one simple form. The dream, as a rule, represents not thoughts but actions. In a dream we take part in an action as one of the actors, or see a situation before our eyes. A dream is a kind of dramatic represen- tation, a series of scenes in that theatre of the brain which Stevenson describes; and only such elements as are capable of being put upon the scene can pass into the dream. A thought cannot be directly represented; it must be enacted, and therefore the dream makes constant use of symbols. The symbolism of the wildest poet falls short of the sym-_ bolism constantly employed in dreams. Temporal relations cannot be represented; in a dream the time is always present. Logical relations cannot be represented; the dream cannot deal directly with an if or a because. Such temporal or logical relations must be expressed, if at all, somehow in- directly in accordance with the dramatic principle. Thus a dream is mainly visual in nature. It may include sounds and other sensations. It is, however, properly a vision. All underlying elements must either be suitable ingredients of a vision or be transformed into such Ingredients, — made visible, or at least sensible. The dreamer, then,_sees_a.. vision representing symbolically the gratification of his wish. "^ Dreams often take us back to the experiences of early childhood. The reader has, perhaps, like the writer, found this one interesting feature of his dreams, — that they some- times bring up long-forgotten incidents, faces, emotions, with surprising vividness. In dreams, as Dryden says, "Sometimes forgotten things long cast behind Rush forward in the brain and come to mind. The nurse's legends are for truth received, And the man dreams but what the boy believed." ' Day dreams also often take us back to childhood. Drown- ing persons are said to see their whole lives, including events in early life long lost from conscious remembrance, in the twinkling of an eye; perhaps this vision is somehow related — » The Cock and the Fox, H. 333-336. A h 36 , Poetry and Dreams the projection of an instinctive, sudden, strong desire to live. Such early memories appear recognizably in the manifest content of dreams; according to Dr. Freud they appear even more frequently in the latent content. Indeed, the latent content of every dream probably goes back for some of its elements, for a part at least of the desires which actuate it, to the experiences of childhood. These experiences have perhaps been entirely forgotten; the early desires have been for some reason repressed. They reappear, however, in dreams, in which we live back into childhood again. "Das Traumen," says Dr. Freud, "ist ein Stiick des iiberwun- denen Kinderseelenlebens."^ The dream usually seizes upon some trivial incident of the preceding day — trivial because such incidents will be free of associations — and makes this a starting-point or point of crystallization, to which the old experiences may attach themselves. But the old experi- ences are the important elements. The significance of these facts for our purpose we shall see presently when we return to poetry. Just as the dream materials are largely derived from childhood, so in dreams we act and feel as children; we escape into an irresponsible world of play which has its only counterpart in childhood. In recounting our dreams we laugh at our strange actions in them, as we should laugh at the actions of children. In general the dream experiences, as compared with those of waking, have a kind of freshness and vigorous youth- fulness about them as if they stood nearer to life's source. The mental activity which produces dreams is different from that of ordinary waking life. It is apparently more simple, elementary, or central — perhaps we may say more childlike. A faculty is at work, which is active also in waking, but here works in a different way or under different control. This is an image-making faculty or imagination, — the phantasy ( ^'l'Tao•^a ) to which Aristotle attributes dreams, hallucinations, and illusions. This faculty is sit- uated between the senses on the one hand and the intellect on the other, reproducing images derived through the senses, combining these under the direction of the intellect, and fur- ' Die 'I'rauinJiuluun, P- ^^'^- F. C. Prescott 37 nishing material for thought.^ Thus in waking moments it is under the control of the intellect. But when the mind is relaxed — at rest or asleep — when it is not on the one hand taking in new sensations or on the other engaged in thought, this faculty, continuing active, answers other more recondite purposes. It subjects itself to the hidden desires of the mind and produces pictures at the instance of these desires. It is, so to speak, no longer at work, but at play. As Dryden says: "Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes; When monarch reason sleeps this mimic wakes. "^^ The pictures which this faculty produces when it escapes from the control of the intellect, as in dreams, we call /<3w/aj/2V. ~ We may now return to poetry. We have seen that the jjiotive impulse in poetry is supplied by the poet's desires. ' There are repressive forces, corresponding to the censor of the dream theory, which conflict with and control the poetic impulse. These forces have already been mentioned; they are the impediments to expression of Keble's theory. The selfish individual impulse cannot give itself free expression; it must have regard for appearances, for convention, for morality. This matter will be considered more fully later. In general the conflict is between the native inspiration of the poet and external authority of whatever kind; the prin- ciple of control arises from the latter. This may be illustrated most readily in the form of poetry, its rhythm and metre, which gives utterance to both elements — the impulse and the control — or is also, like the subject matter, produced by their conflict. Strong and un- restrained emotion expresses itself in waves, with a throb- bing or pulsation, in recurrent movements appearing in voice and gesture, which, constitute a natural rhythm. Poetry, an emotional expression, has this rhythm. The beat of a passage of poetry or impassioned prose is not a superadded ornament, but an inevitable and__vital accom- paniment of such expj:ession, going back, we may imagine. ' E. Wallace, Aristotle's Psychology, p. Ixxivii. = The Cock and the Fox, 11. 325-326. 38 Poetry and Dreams for its origin to the poet's heart. It is, as Shelley says, an "echo of the eternal music." In a free expression this rhythm would be bound by no law but that imposed by the feeling itself. In certain poets of a primitive or strongly individual kind, for instance in Ossian or Walt Whitman, it is felt in something like its native wildncss and force. Usually, however, it is restrained by regard for the tradi- tions and conventions of the poetic style. In Tennyson, for example, it has become conventionalized — subjected to prosodial law. The rhythm has become measured, metri- cal; it has been adapted to recognized forms of line and stanza. The nature and cause of this metrical restraint arc well stated by Keble. "The conventional rules of metre and rhythm . . . may be no less useful, in throwing a kind of veil over those strong and deep emotions, which need relief, but cannot endure publicity. The very circumstance of their being expressed in verse draws off attention from the vio- lence of the feelings themselves, and enables people to say things which they could not express in prose, much in the same way as the musical accompaniment gives meaning to the gestures of the dance, and hinders them from appearing .to the bystanders merely fantastic. This effect of metre seems quite obvious as far as regards the sympathies of others. Emotions which in their unrestrained expression would ap- pear too keen and outrageous to kindle fellow feeling in any one are mitigated and become comparatively tolerable, I not to say interesting to us, when we find them so far under I control as to leave those who feel them at liberty to pay' .attention to measure and rhyme, and the other expedients pf metrical composition. But over and above the cflFect (on others, we apprehend that even in a writer's own mind there commonl)- exists a sort of instinctive delicacy, which mnds its account in the work of arranging lines and syllables, and is content to utter, by their aid, what it would have shrunk from setting down in the language of conversation; the metrical form thus furnishing, at the same time, a vent for eager feelings, and a veil of reserve to draw over them.'" I 'British Ciilic, Vol. XXIV, p. 43S. Cf. ColcridRC, Biographi.1 I.iteraria, Cliap- XVIII , on the origin of metre. F. C. Prescott 39 The form of-pcetry, then, is the product of two forces — the rhythmic impulse, and the (Control represented by metre, liiie,^ stanza, and the like.' The natural rhythm of unre- strained emotion would be unpleasing to a hearer as wanting in regard for this hearer — as wanting art; it must accord- ingly be reduced to recognized forms. It must not, how- ever, be lost in this reduction, but must be felt constantly behind and through these forms giving them animation. In a poet like Shelley, in whom the poetic impulse is strong, the natural rhythm is always so felt; it even constantly threatens to break through the bonds of form and secure its freedom. In Pope, in whom the poetic impulse is weak, or at any rate in some of the followers of Pope, in whom native impulse is wanting, the form is everything, and the echo of the eternal music is entirely lost. The old question, whether or not metre is essential to poetry, must be an- swered formally, as the best critics from Aristotle to Words- worth have answered it, in the negative; in every tolerable literary expression, however, — even in that other harmony of poetical prose, which has not only its rhythm but its laws no less exacting than those of verse — there must be, or will be, not only the element of inspiration but the ele- ment of control, which in poetry employs metre as one of its commonest instruments. Art as well as inspiration is essential to poetry. ■ The principle thus illustrated in the form of poetry may be applied also to its substance. The significant figure of the veil which Keble twice applies to the form, he em- ploys again in describing the substance, in which the same controlling forces are at work. "In the prose romances of Sir Walter Scott," he says, "and in all others which would be justly considered poetical, it will be found, we believe, that the story is, in fact, interposed as a kind of transparent veil between the listener and the narrator's real drift and feelings." Scott's ruling passion, his desire to live ' Rhyme has the eflFect of dividing the expression into lines of regular length recognizable by the ear. Intrinsically, however, it goes back probably to a primi- tive or childish fondness for playing and jingling with the sound of words without regard to their meaning. For this impulse in children, see Freud, Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, p. 105. i: -il. 40 Poetry and Dreams in the past and to make the past live again, met, as Keble shows, various checks; it could, however, be freely expressed in the guise of a story. This case is typical; every creative poetical work is such a veiled representation. The deep feeling of the poet cannot have a direct but only an indirect, or, so to speak, censored expression, through the medium of what Keble calls "associations more or less accidental." The poet's product, like the dream, is a fiction in two senses. ;' In the first place, it is a phantasy representing an actually '^ ungratiiied desire as gratified_^ \ In the second place, this representation is not direct but indirect or veiled; it is ^allegorical, figurative, or symbolic. It lets one thing stand for another and by this means bodies forth, in concrete sensible forms, the hidden motions of the soul of the poet. Or, as Shelley beautifully expresses the same thought, t'it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the in- erlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide — abide, because there is no portal of expression from the ""T*.'" cavern of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe ^^^df things.'" -"' ' The characteristic operation of the poet's mind, then, consists in an embodying of his deep feelings, his uncon- scious desires, in the fictional forms which we recognize as customary in and proper to poetry. This operation, how- ler, or the modes in which this embodiment is effected, are untraced and obscure. The final product of the poetic imagination, the manifest poetry, is a complex construction, or, to employ a probably better word, a complex vital growth, out of the depths of the poetic mind. We can only surmise, for example, by what strange organic action the religious emotion of John Bunyan gathered to its use the sensations, experiences, thoughts, available associations of whatever kind, contained in the dreamer's mind, and thus grew into the series of scenes which make up Pilgrim's Progress. In order to trace this complex operation wc should have to know, more fully than we can ever know it, the historj-of this poet — 'Defense of Poetry, ed. Cook, p. 41, F. C. Prescott 41 his early training, his experiences, the people he met, the books he read, the sermons he heard — the whole growth and content of his mind. If we had all these facts as data, and if we knew the working of the poetic faculty, then we might trace the growth of his poetic product from its original moving emotion to its final form. We have not the data and we do not know the working of the poetic faculty. There is, we may conjecture, trusting to the parallel we have been following, a "poetic work" — Dichterarbeit — corre- sponding to the dream work already referred to. If we were familiar with the mechanisms of the former, as according to Dr. Freud we now are with the latter, then doubtless — given the necessary biographical data — we might analyze-v poetry, like dreams, to discover its underlying motives and ) sources. Perhaps a study of Dr. Freud's mechanisms of condensation, displacement, etc., might throw much light on the working of the poetic faculty. Perhaps, for example, the extraordinary concision and significance of poetry, as compared with prose, is not due to mere brevity or ellipsis, but partly to "condensation," in the sense in which this term is used in the dream theory — that is, to the fact that each portion of the poetic product is "over-determined," and has many roots in the poet's mind.^ We cannot fully explore the field thus indicated at this point. Some observations, however, may be made, j^oetry, lik e the dream, is al ways a pro duct, pi__emotion. "No literary expression," says Theodore Watts, in his admirable essay on the subject, "can, properly speaking, be called poetry that is not in a certain deep sense emotional."^ And just as in the transformation of the dream the original feeling of , the dreamer passes through without change of quality and attaches itself to the manifest dream, so probably in the transformation of poetry the original feeling of the poet i / retains its original tone if not its original intensity; though 1/ ii^ all else may be fiction, this remains real; the final poem, ' whatever fictitious expression it may employ, is transfused with the true feeling of the poet's heart. Thus the genuine feature of poetry lies in its feeling; this may attach itself to 'For condensation, see Die Traumdeutung, p. 204. 'Encyclopedia Britannica, "Poetry." 1 4:2 Poetry and Dreams \ . the wildest fiction; but the fiction still appeals to us as es- sentially truthful because it is animated by truth. "^i *' ^ Poetry again, like the dream, is concrete in its method; and the ingredients of poetry like the ingredients of the dream must conform to this principle of composition. Poetry is correctly defined by David Masson as "the art of produc- ing a fictitious concrete."^ "With abstractions," to quote again from Theodore Watts, "the poet has nothing to do, !\save to take them and turn them into concretions." The poet may think as well as feel; he may start with abstract ruths, but his thoughts and his truths are only the under- ying elements of his poetry. The thoughts cannot be ex- pressed directly; they must be reduced to concrete terms, appropriately embodied in the actions of things and persons, expressed in the proper poetic language of figures and sym- Dols. So one evidence of Goethe's poetic mastery, accord- ing to Carlyle, was his "singular4y— embkinatic intellect; his perpetual never-failing tendency to transform into shape, into life, the opinion, the feeling that may dwell within him, which, in its widest sense, we reckon to be essentially the grand problem of the poet. . . . Everything has form, everything has visual existence; the poet's imagination bodies forth the forms of things unseen, his pen ' turns them to shape. "^ But we may as well quote directly from Shakespeare: "And as the imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination: That, if it would but apprehend some joy It comprehends some bringer of that joy."' 'Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Otiicr Kssays, p. 201. Criticism, according to Mr. W. C. Browncll, is the reverse of poetry: "Criticism, then, may not inexactly be described as the statement of the concrete in terms of the abstract." Atlantic Monthly, April, 1911, p. 548. This illuminates the relation between poetry and criticism and the value of the latter. 'Essays, "Goethe." 'Midsummer Niglit's Droam, .\ct V, Sc. 1. F. C. Prescott 43 So, according to Aristotle's theory, "A work of art re- produces its original, not as it is in itself, but as it appears to the senses. It addresses itself not to the abstract reason but to the sensibility; ... it is concerned with outward appearances; it employs illusions; its world is not that which is revealed by pure thought; it sees truth, but in its concrete manifestations, not as an abstract idea."^ Poetry, then, like dreams, is concrete; its representation Is made "under forms manifest to sense"; perhaps, also, chiefly and characteristically under forms manifest to the sense of sight. The words commonly employed in describ- ing the poet's activity suggest this mainly visual character. ^ He portrays and pictures; he imagines; "imaging," Dryden / declares, "is in itself the very height and life of poetry."^ To the poet, as to the dreamer, is ascribed the power of vision. In dreams we have seen that some incident of the pre- deding day, which is free of associations, serves as a start- ing-point or point of crystallization. So the inspired poet often finds in some casual experience — a mountain daisy or a bright star or a region about Tintern — a centre around ' which his poetical conceptions may gather. Of his famous / poem Wordsworth says, for example, " I began it upon leav- ing Tintern, after crossing the Wye, and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening. . . . Not a line of it was altered, and not any part of it written down till I reached Bristol." Of this feature of the poetic work, however, the best account is given by Goethe. In Dichtung und Wahr- heit, he says that after trying suicide and giving it up he determined to live. "To do this with cheerfulness, however, I required to have some poetical task given me, wherein all that I had felt, thought, or dreamed on this weighty busi- ness might be spoken forth. With such view, I endeavored to collect the elements which for a year or two had been floating about in me; I represented to myself the circumstances which had most oppressed and afflicted me: but nothing of all this would take form; there was wanting an incident, a fable, in which I might embody it. All at once I hear 'Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, pp. 127, 153. ^The Author's Apology for Heroic Poetry and Poetic License. ih 44 Poetry and Dreams ^tidings of Jerusalem's death, ... in this instant the plan ; of Werther was invented: the whole shot together from all 1 sides, and became a solid mass; as the water in a vessel, I which already stood on the point of freezing, is by the ^lightest motion changed at once into firm ice."' We may suppose, however, from the analogy of the dream that this casual experience contributes only the final touch; and that the essential elements of poetry go back to deeper experience and more settled emotions. It would be difficult to show by direct evidence that poetry generally or often goes back to repressed experiences of childhood. Other considerations, however, suggest that in some respects the parallel holds again here. Poetry has the same freshness and youthfulness we have noted in dreams; it also has upon it the dew of morning and the light of the east. The poet's mind works in a primitive and, without disparagement, childlike way. The poet has the "wild wit, invention ever new," which Gray attributes to childhood." The poet, like Walt Whitman, is "a man, yet by these tears a little boy again. "^ "The moment the poetic mood is upon him all the trappings of the world with which for years he may have been clothing his soul — the world's knowingness, its cyni- cism, its self-seeking, its ambition — fall away, and the man becomes an inspired child again, with ears attuned to nothing but the whispers of those spirits of the Golden Age, who, according to Hesiod, haunt and bless this degenerate earth."* Indeed the Golden Age, with its clear bright figures, and the Garden of Eden, with its first mortal pair, who were naked yet unashamed, and who had not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, are in some sense doubt- less only beautiful dreams, poetic visions, going back either to the childhood of those who first conceived them or more broadly to the childhood of the race. In these myths is seen most clearly the connection between dreams and poetry which we have been trying to trace. They are the dreams of 'Carlylc's translalion; Essays, "Goethe." • Eton College." ' 'Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." The whole poem is an excellent commentary on our text. *'V. Watts, Encyclopedia Hritannica, "Poetry." F. C. Prescott 45 nations, bearing somewhat the same relation, as Dr. Abra- ham has shown,' to the dreams of the individual which folk poetry bears to the poetry of the individual poet. They are likewise the beginnings of our poetry, and furnish a clear explanation of the working of poetic genius. "The theory which has been applied to the Grecian mythology," says David Masson, "applies equally to the poetic genius in general. The essence of the mythical process, it is said, lay in this, that the earlier children of the earth having no abstract language, every thought of theirs, of whatever kind, and about whatever matter, was necessarily a new act of imagination, a new excursion into the ideal concrete. If they thought of the wind, they did not think of a fluid rushing about, but of a deity blowing from a cave; if they thought of virtue rewarded, they saw the idea in the shape of a visible transaction in some lone place, between beings human and divine." It is this primitive poetical faculty for which Wordsworth would return to paganism, that he may "Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." "And so," Masson continues, "with the poetical mode of thought to this day. Every thought of the poets, about whatever subject, is transacted not mainly in prepositional language, but for the most part in a kind of phantasmagoric or representative language, of imaginary scenes, objects, incidents, and circumstances."^ Thus a very recent poet, Arnold, starting with the thought that Shakespeare stands far above other poets, transforms this thought into a picture, sees Shakespeare "o'ertopping knowledge," and then as a hill, which in turn is poetized into a mythical giant: "Forthe loftiest hill , That to the stars uncrowns his majesty, Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea, Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place, Spares but the cloudy border of his base To the foiled searching of humanity."' 'K. Abraham, Traum und Mythus, pp. 37, 71. *Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays, p. 229. ' 'Shakespeare." WL 46 Poetry and Dreams "The poet, then," as Professor Woodberry puts it, "seems to present the phenomenon of a highly developed mind ^^orking in a primitive way."' •^ The mental faculty which produces poetry is akin to "that already described as producing dreams. It might be called the phantasy, the fancy, or the imagination; but V^since these terms have been unfortunately extended and di- verted to new meanings, it may best be called simply the (image-making faculty. It will be worth while to consider th're-«ia.tter for a moment historically. The faculty before us is equivalent to the ^avraaCa, to which Aristotle attri- butes not only dreams but poetry. This Aristotle defines as "the movement which results upon an actual sensation." In other words, it is primarily the " after eiTect of a sensation, the continued presence of an impression after the object which exerted ithas been withdrawn from actuaiexperience."^ It is notable that Hobbes, who on this point closely fol- lows Aristotle, translates